Show HN: A Directory of Tech Companies, Events, News, Tweets etc in Scotland | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: A Directory of Tech Companies, Events, News, Tweets etc in Scotland

find.techin.scot

131 pointsjarofgreen37 comments

Hello!

I’m the creator of this.

For more than 4 years now I’ve been running websites round the tech community in Scotland, and several people have talked to us about listing companies.

So this is the first version of that! Anyone can add or edit a company (all moderated).

We are already talking to people about uses for the data and are working on code to introduce tagging by technologies used. This will let people pull sub-sets of the data for use elsewhere.

We have a track record in Scotland for running https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/ to list events, and we bring to this problem the same focus on making sure the data is correct and is kept up to date. That is why we ask for email addresses from submitters (optional and private) - so we can follow up later.

( https://find.techin.scot/ also has Events, News, Twitter Lists and online communities.)

Happy to hear comments or feedback, publicly here or privately at hello@jmbtechnology.co.uk

Thanks, James

ps. The tech is that https://find.techin.scot/ is a static website served from AWS S3/CloudFront. The software that runs the directories of companies and online communities is a PHP/Symfony app and this stores the data, takes submissions and allows admins to moderate them.

Awesome. Small CSS suggestion:

in html:

    font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif;

You currently use Arial which looks a little poor.

Thanks for your suggestion! Just been playing with some different sans-serif and serif fonts to have a look ... not sure I like all Serif - may end up with a mix - Arial in the header and titles and a serif font in the body? Will test with some people :-)

Research: serif font (Cambria, Times, TNR, etc) in the body, 8-12 words per line is generally considered most readable. Check out how Medium does it.

Thanks for making this! One suggestion is it would be nice to have RSS/ATOM feeds of events (and the rest too), but I can't see any from a casual browse of the page or source.

You can find events feeds by clicking Export at https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/area/59-scotland - the rest is not available yet, but request noted.

Hello from Edinburgh - nice work! Quite excited about the list of events: there's a bunch of very interesting stuff on there.

Thank you :-) Events is where we started. I come from a background as an local event organiser, and from that I ended up starting https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/ 4 and a half years ago. I'll maybe see you around town then!

I'm curious as to why Skyscanner, Fanduel etc. don't appear here.

No-one has added them :-) https://find.techin.scot/companies/add/

(Actually Skyscanner just has, and they will appear shortly when the caches clear.)

Glad to hear Skyscanner are on the list, they've been one of the best things to happen to the Scottish tech scene, both in terms of raising its profile and sponsoring (and hosting) many of the meetups in both Glasgow and Edinburgh.

I'm a founder of a spin-out called Scoop Analytics [1] from the School of Computing Science at University of Glasgow. Skyscanner has been incredibly generous and have recently given us and a number of other student-led startups from the School access to space in their Glasgow office to work from. If that doesn't demonstrate their commitment to improving the Scottish tech scene, then I don't know what does.

(We're at the bank of desks next to the Chill Zone if anyone from Skyscanner wants to come and say Hello!).

[1] http://scoopanalytics.com

I'll pop over next time I'm in that office :) Really interesting product, best of luck with it!

This looks awesome! Would love to grab a coffee at some point...

Just sent you an email from your contact form, we should chat.

Rockstar North are missing too. Probably one of the most successful Scottish tech companies.

If you have any contacts there, please do pass on https://find.techin.scot/companies/add :-)

This is handy, but I wish it had been posted a day earlier -- gutted that I missed the Edinburgh Women in Data Science tea.

Hey - big fan and I love scottish tech :)

Hello from Edinburgh!

Thanks! :-) We're also based in Edinburgh, great place.

"Toshiba Medial Visualisation Systems"

It should probably say "Medical" :)

Fixed! Thanks. (Anyone can suggest changes tho!)

This is great! Moving back from England to Scotland after uni 10 years ago was literally the worst choice of my life for a programming career. Plenty of Senior jobs for a Graduate wage.

I like stuff like this :)

Did you consider automating it at all though? I've been considering using Companies House data, and a web-scraper, to find tech companies in my local area.

Thanks :-)

Oh, companies house is a good one. I would have a look, but I would be wary as I can see traps; for instance the legal office address registered at Companies House might not be the actual office address you should go to for an event or an interview.

But generally I do like automation, as long as we can get high quality results.

I'll let you know if I ever get around to it!

I was presuming the legal office address was going to be their accountant's address too. However, if you get a name from Companies House, you might be able to find a website, and then a contact page... It might turn into a hard NLP problem though :)

The companies house data should be useful in that the company name is different for companies registered in scotland (Starts with SC) compared to those started in england and wales which just have a number.

I'd say there's probably a big correlation between that and companies operating primarily in Scotland as there's no major difference in terms of tax etc (for now) on where companies are registered, so no incentive to put in an artificial registration.

Just curious why there are no tech. (it, bio) companies listed in St Andrews. It's a university town so one would expect to see a tech presence there.

I don't think people stick around long after graduating - it's a pretty tiny town and Edinburgh's close enough and not that much more expensive that it'd be easy to move and get set up there instead (not to mention Dundee being even closer).

Remember that startup funding is pretty lean in the UK in general compared to the US, and this far north of London in a quiet town I'd imagine it's near enough nonexistent no matter how prestigious the university is

Deleted comment

We have quite a burgeoning startup scene up here. Maybe it's time to come back north and check it out! :)

FreeAgent are based in Edinburgh. Everyone I know who uses it raves about it to me.

Great idea, we will stick Farmflo up there, we are looking for new devs just now!

I haven't seen that appear yet - if you have any problems or comments about the process let us know!

Apologies - I got distracted....

Lots going on in Edinburgh, not so much in Glasgow.

Anyone know why that is?

If it's a self-add thing, possibly just hasn't had the word of mouth yet over here?

More of an IRL comment - I get recruiters looking for people in Edinburgh at least once a week. Not a peep about tech in Glasgow though.

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