BEARPIG

Will Dayble from SquareWeave talking about UI.

Some nice Plexus and C4D animation going on here and explains fairly simply what Bitcoin is about.

The need for cheaper office space in Jersey is obvious – the price of rental work spaces hasn’t changed too much as now instead of offering more flexible spaces, landlords are just re-decorating with the same ‘as-many-desks-on-a-floor-as-possible’ mentality; or their spaces are staying empty as seen by the massive amount of For Rent signs throughout St.Helier. They haven’t seemed to clue up to the fact that when times are tough, businesses rarely change location unless they are downsizing and that the required office layout in 1985 is no longer attractive to workers or employers.

The success of ventures like 4 Wharf Street & Regus have proven what a lot of people know already; a lot of people are starting out on their own and creating their own business. This is maybe due to being made redundant and wanting a change of career, feeling their employer is holding them back and they want to go freelance or their household needs another form of income from what was previously considered a hobby. Either way, the fact is that if you want to start a business in Jersey and be taken seriously, you need a workspace that isn’t from home.

The sad thing is that even in the digital industry (where the same work can be done from a laptop in a coffee shop instead of a large office) you’d still be looked down upon if we don’t have a ‘proper’ workspace. And here in lies the solution – in nearly every city in the world you’ll be able to find a co-working space.

Co-working

A space that you subscribe to use, sharing the burden of rent/bills/other costs with others. This alone would be useful to have more of in Jersey (although as mentioned, there are some already but these tend to segmented office units).

The biggest positive that co-working spaces have is that you’re working alongside people in the same position you’re in. From working on their own at home – they suddenly have people to bounce ideas off, to chat to during a lunch-break, to feed work to if they need your services. After all, it’s easier to hire the person you work with everyday rather than spend time researching another person.

By far the largest industry that works very well in this way is the tech/digital industry. When you have a niche skill and you suddenly need to partner up on a project with a different skillset, the person in the same room as you becomes a very valuable asset – how many of your competitors would have instant access to the knowledge of wide tech knowledge without having to be a huge company. This method is especially good for Lean Startups.

And back to my original point – Digital Jersey is doing a good job of making the right noises (if slightly too slowly for some) but a lot of the talk of ‘attracting tech companies to the island’ is speculative at best. They’re approaching the matter from one of business (legislative/tax breaks/etc.) which although being important, they’re missing one of the most vital parts of the tech industy…

Culture.

If you want to attract any forward thinking digital community to Jersey, you need to show that you’re building a startup culture here. If not, then you offer nothing over anywhere else (especially when other offshore locations will start pushing fibre and tax breaks). There’s a reason why the archetypal tech company has a pool table in it’s foyer, a meeting room full of stuffed toys & proper espresso machines in it’s kitchen – this all makes employees want to work there. This alone doesn’t breed great culture but it means that if they like working there, they’ll be great people to be around. This leads to more helpful and friendly staff, which creates a great culture.

The same can be said for co-working spaces. You get a good looking space with a bit of history/individuality & a good brand and suddenly you have not only a useful asset to local freelancers, but the base of a tech community. Somewhere where company politics/opinions hold no weight, somewhere that people will constantly be sharing ideas, and more importantly somewhere, that if you were moving your business to Jersey, you’d visit to get a reading on what’s happening locally (and probably get a desk!).

Building a Tech Hub

By encouraging smaller startups (small personal-wise, not scope or turnover) to move into this kind of space, Jersey could be busy building this culture while Digital Jersey organises larger tech firms to move over.

And if you’d think that it’d be a lot of funds to create this space, you’re forgetting the massive amounts of empty office/retail spaces that are lying around. The beauty of this type of space is that you don’t need to redecorate too much as character of the location helps build the culture. A load of door-desks, decent coffee machine/beer fridge, fibre with Wi-Fi and lots of power sockets is pretty much all you need. You also then have a space to do monthly talks/meetups, which further encourage the industry to grow. It could also provide a base for those companies involved in Innovation Fund that’s being setup.

You may think that the industry in Jersey doesn’t warrant this type of environment and is doing fine at the moment, and you’d be right. But it’s not going to get us to where we’d want the tech/digital industry in Jersey to be.

The only way to get there is to grow a great culture of talented & friendly companies that are populated by both local & foreign workers who are pushing new ideas and technologies, not just locally, but globally.

Moving forward instead of catching up

We have the talent, the space and the infrastructure; if Digital Jersey & States of Jersey helped launch or support this type of venture, then they could have a hand in guiding where the industry headed, instead of being left behind.

Something I had to do today was easily get the latitude & longitude of a location from Google Maps. It used to be that you’d have to use an add-on or bit of javascript to get this in some form, but Google have now made it a lot easier.

• Right-click on the map where you want the co-ords for.
• Go to What’s Here?
• The Latitude & Longitude are now in the search bar at the top (Latitude first).

It’s good to see that Blackberry (formally RIM) to be starting to claw back some semblance of a public marketing strategy (which is strange considering the when you take away the issues in the last year, they’ve been plodding along quite happily).

It’s nice to see that last year’s Q4 results are better than expected and as I’d previously discussed with others, there’ll always be a part of the market that wants a ‘business’ targeted smartphone manufacturer that isn’t Apple (closed eco-system leads to not easily integrating into existing corporate structures) or Android (open-source which traditionally Big Business tends to stay away from and owned by an advertising firm).

I managed to get my hands on a Z10 the other way and although I’m an Apple fanboy through-and-through, I was impressed by the finish of the device and the ease of use for the OS. I can see it going from strength to strength with the flagship model & low-cost handset model and increasing functions OS although only time will tell.

What are your impressions of the new device and OS?

Here’s a interesting article by Radu Chelariu for Smashing Magazine on a potential way of deciding design break-points in responsive builds by using physical units. Could lead to a slightly simplier design process, but in my experience, every separate design should differ on break-points dependent on the function of the website itself.

Head on over to Legacy of Defeat to get some free fonts by the talented Hydro74. Also highly recommend that you check out the rest of his work at his site.