Connecting the UK Student Tech Scene | Hacker News Reader

Connecting the UK Student Tech Scene

ammaar.me

66 pointsasronline44 comments

UCL has been organizing well attended Hackathons, seed funding pitch competitions, partnerships with founders and accelerators as well as running its own mini incubator for the past few years. Even a quick skim on google would show a multitude of student (UCL) born startups that have succeeded: Loom, backed by Google Ventures and acquired by Dropbox this year + Vungle, raised $17MM series B this year. I understand that from a Kings perspective the tech scene looks weak, but to discredit the scene as a whole when UCL has been leading the way with significant success for the past few years, is misleading.

Similarly, the situation in Cambridge (and as I understand it Oxford) has been very solid for a very long time.

There exist Computing and Technology (CUCaTS), Computing Facility (SRCF), Technology Enterprise (CUTEC) and Enterpreneurs (CUE) societies. The latter two have fallen somewhat out of favour and notice around the Computer Lab the last few years, but are still running strong attracting tech entrepreneurs from Physics and Engineering.

There's a lot of focus on moving out to established tech companies (blame the recruitment fair and regular company events) but this outgoing year appeared to have a high fraction of the CS year attempting to work on startups in one form or another.

As someone who has been at one of those institutions and is currently at the other, I haven't noticed much in the way of hackdays at either... Maybe it's changed at Cambridge, but I didn't see much sign of brewing collaborations at the time (beyond the creative-commons-or-public-domain-only file sharing network).

In Oxford I can recommend Oxford Geek Nights (http://oxford.geeknights.net). It's not student run, but sometimes has students speaking and it's always interesting.

It's improving at Cambridge, but slowly.

I heard that a third of the graduating CompSci class applied to Entrepreneur First this year?

I don't think the post is arguing that the student tech scene is weak, just fragmented. These are amazing successes - it'd be great to have heard about them.

It would be such a boost for the student scene to hear from such student-born startups and learn/look up to them.

I definitely don't think it's about whether UCL is leading the way or King's.

The post isn't saying there is no tech scene but can we even compare what it is at the moment to how it is in america.

A good example is http://codelaborate.org/ . They went to the same uni(Oxford), same course, both doing programming on the side & yet didn't know each other till this summer in London.

All our efforts before were fragmented, resulting in for example, three hackathons in the same weekend.

Sure great things are happening in individual places but imagine the exponential growth when it's less silo'ed & everyone is working together towards a bigger goal.

I just checked out codelaborate.org. What a shitty website! The design is nice, but the font is almost impossible to read. I assume it's because I'm on Windows (OS X usually renders fonts better than Windows), but it's a really good way to quickly alienate half of your target audience...

Glad you shared your concerns but your comment could have been written much nicer & still achieved the same effect.

Yeah, I know, but I often don't do it, on purpose. It's an easy way to filter people, those who prefer the form from those who prefer the content.

Thanks for the feedback. We're aware of an issue in certain browsers on some versions of Windows (boo hiss Windows font rendering) and will fix it as soon as we get a chance - though don't fear, the issue isn't actually affecting half of our audience! (didn't quite anticipate today's surge in popularity!)

I'm glad to hear about your successes at UCL, but I think you've missed the point of my blog post. I am not discrediting the tech scene at all. In fact, half way through the post I admit that we thought the problem was inactivity when in fact it was just being disconnected.

UCL might have done all of these awesome things, but a lot of people outside UCL did not know about it. We want to connect the UK tech scene as a whole and get people to notice all of these great achievements. There are tons of great societies and people should know about what they're doing.

The title speaks for itself, it's about connecting the UK student tech scene.

IMHO, if students want to get connected, they should be getting involved in their local tech community (i.e. the non-academic one). There are loads of regular, tech-focused events here in London, such as our own Hacker News London meetup[1] and MiniBar[2]. If you're interested in jobs, Silicon Milkroundabout[3] and AppsJunction[4]. If you're just interested in socialising over a few beers, there's Silicon Drinkabout every Friday evening.

Those are just a few of the regular events - there's loads of others. Startup Digest[6] is a good way of finding out about them.

1: www.meetup.com/HNLondon

2: www.meetup.com/minibar

3: www.siliconmilkroundabout.com/

4: www.meetup.com/AppsJunction-Where-Startups-Meet-Developers

5: silicondrinkabout.com

6: www.startupdigest.com/digests/london

While this is great, it is pretty hard to find students attend all of this regularly. Also, university is where most students will naturally spend their time. In the US especially, there's a great balance of things happening in the local tech community and at College. I would say you need to be a bit involved in both, but your university should primarily have the environment to allow you to start looking into all of the other things happening around you in the first place.

I am committee member of the PyData London Meetup and I'd argue that the tech scene in London is simply more vibrant outside of the universities at the various meetups, hacker spaces and conferences so often you are better served going to those than a University society.

There is a certain amount of red tape organising events at Universities (my basis for this is KCL and Imperial) unless they are either explicitly educational and you often have to liase with security so we've had a lot less friction by engaging tech companies to host meetings. You get the industry links by making use of their facilities, you get students, devs and business types and in all honesty companies in Silicon Roundabout are gagging to look cool and host a meetup.

Saying that, I'm about to start post-doc work at KCL (been here since Undergrad) so I'll be kicking around for the next 3 yrs so I'll be signing up.

This is very true as well. There is a lot happening outside of University that is easy to access. Or at least in London.

KCL has actually been a lot more accommodating since KCL Tech started to take off post-hackathon. We've got great plans in store for the coming year too. Do drop by and say hi! Looking forward to meeting at our events :)

It's a real pity though, because there is one group I never see at PyData; undergrads (and this is true for many other meetups). And that could be seen as a problem; every tech scene needs its supply of mindless idealists if it wants to produce a reliable stream of start ups.

Hey Laurie. To be honest, if the undergrads can knock out presentations as good as your presentation on DOTA2 analysis then, we, at PyData London should be actively trying to get more undergrads to come to our meetup.

An unbalanced group is, as you say, a problem. The key is to get a wide gamut; people with ideas and some idea of implementation, flat-out implementation people (devs and designers), business people and investors. A lot of the undergrads I know are green but they often have a lot of energy, ideas and can be fine coders.

Yeah, the London tech scene is big.

It's funny how meetups have taken over universities as the place to be for the best knowledge transfer.

As you say, it is way easier to host things at companies, coworking spaces, coffee shops, and pubs.

Universities are exclusive, but they lose quality by being so. They also lose the title of "the place to be" for learning. They're now in third place behind meetups and topic specific internet communities.

Great post! I can completely relate to what was described in the first paragraph - before going to university my impression was that loads of people would be working on cool projects (not even necessarily tech-related) and that it would be really inspiring, but unfortunately when I got there this wasn't the case at all. I got the feeling that there was more cool tech stuff going on at London universities, but word never really got round to us. Our entrepreneurship society (Oxford Entrepreneurs, OE hereafter) seemed to be really disconnected with the 'tech society' (Oxford CompSoc) and the majority of people attending OE events were MBAs/other grad students. (The new OE committee are working hard to change this though)

I think HackCampus is a great idea and is exactly what the UK tech scene needs. We (OE) are about to hold our first ever hackathon this November open to all students at all universities, and it seems many other universities are also starting to do the same, so a way to connect UK students interested in this kind of stuff is needed now more than ever.

Best of luck to HackCampus and KCL Tech Society!

Edit: I should add that a lot of Oxford alums have gone on to do really cool stuff, but I think a lot can be done to interest more undergrads in tech/entrepreneurship.

Thanks, man! Keep us in the loop with your hackathon. We'd love to get the word out. :)

As an Oxford grad who used to go to a lot of OE events, I agree with you completely (and have definitely encountered the OP's disappointment!). I set up my first company in Oxford just after I left a few years ago, and there was almost nobody else there - 6 months later, we decided to move to London to find a bigger tech scene.

Since, we've built a company almost exclusively out of London and Oxford technical graduates, and we've just started an internship programme this year (and they're awesome). If you'd like any involvement from inside the industry, get in touch, we're really keen to build a stronger relationship! The same goes for any technical student groups - if you're engaged enough to organise or attend tech events then you are what the London tech scene needs.

That's toby at http://gearhart.co.uk/ if you want to get in touch :)

I went to Imperial College London, graduated last year – we've also organized a couple of hackathons in the past years, and hosted the main Seedcamp event in 2012. There is also the Imperial Ventures and Imperial Create Lab. I can say that the amount of student tech scene stuff in Imperial has increased over the 4 years I was there, during year 1 I can't really remember any events like that, so it's good the community is picking up speed in the right direction.

But as you say, what's important is that the different universities are not disconnected – organizing+advertising hackathons and hosting big events like Seedcamp is a good way to connect the students across universities.

Techmeetup http://techmeetup.co.uk/ already covers all of Scotland and has goodish contacts with UCL and Seedcamp and stuff...

I agree that the UK Student tech scene is quite disconnected.

There are quite a few computer science oriented student societies. For instance, at York (where I did my undergrad) there's HackSoc. There's an IRC channel somewhere on freenode with computer science societies from the uk. We're not completely disconnected, but we're slowly growing to the point that we can start collaborating and having friendly competitions.

Do you have the name of that IRC channel?

details are http://www.compsocs.uk/

I think we have the rivalry part pretty much nailed, especially in London ;)

Really eager to see more on the collaboration side - societies working together to support the greater community: traditional CS backgrounds or not.

Yeah, for sure! It's great to see a lot more events happening now. There's a pretty great Facebook group of all the 'Hackathon Hackers' in the UK too: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hackathonhackersuk/

My experience with the tech scene in the UK leads me to believe that it is the class system which has to be broached in order for this to be broken wide open. Too often in English society clear class division is used to keep people out of touch with each other - I saw very clear examples of this in the hackerspace scene, wherein I noticed with great dismay the typical 'sterotype-casting' of individuals, whose technological prowess was not insignificant, working against them. The idea of "dirty student techies stinking up the lab" was far too prevalent - even in the hackerspace scene. British culture takes too much pride in its classist attitudes, as embodied in much of its culture, and I think this definitely works against any effort to build a broader community.

Generally, I'd hope that the 'tech classes' rapidly dissuade themselves of any of the so-called virtues of British classism, but this isn't something thats necessarily on the table. Too often, bigotry and prejudice gets in the way of technological progress; this is very much the case, in my experience, within the UK tech sector.

I can certainly say that I have seen very little of what you describe in the UK tech scene at least certainly not up in the North East where I am - perhaps London is different but I can't believe it is that different.

And as far as "dirty students sinking up the lab goes", this is more likely an isolated case rather than the prevailing norm in my experience.

It's rarely seen in normal society as well. I really don't understand where this person is coming from.

Really I have seen this attitude recently in a FTSE 100 company and I am sure it was a factor in some of the many multi million pound fuckups they had.

It's a huge factor in the UK's tradition of multi-million pound fuckups.

There's a definite bias against people, especially clever people, who get stuff done. You're not supposed to do that here - you're supposed to get on by knowing the right people, talking a good game, and being above it all because of your social connections and money.

Actual hands-on development work is for the little people.

Occasionally one needs to say important-sounding things in public and hustle a little. But that's as practical as it gets.

The irony is that the UK has world-class engineering talent, and a long history of real innovation. But the UK is the only country to have had - for example - its own working satellite launch platform, and thrown it away to save money.

We genuinely have some of the worst political and business "leadership" in the developed world.

Did you, by chance, pay for your own education?

No. State school. Shit area.

I think that the UK is still considered the most classist country in Europe.. to an outsider, the confusing arrays of 'types of people' that you would encounter during a trip to the UK, as described by its denizens, lends credence to this view. "Don't talk to that chav, mate!", or "yes, she's an upper-class type, went to school so-and-so", and "well, you're an engineer .. how very working class of you .." are all statements I have encountered with random people on the street during my brief visits to the UK, and it was quite unnerving just how ingrained this mode of thinking is in the populace. British TV seems to be nothing but a war of the classes.

So I'm not sure you'd understand, unless you left for a while and came back. The British have a reputation for it - this can't be because the rest of the world hates Britain for some reason (there are legitimate reasons), but has to have some bearing in the truth of the circumstance. Classism is a very real thing in the UK - especially as a result of its education system, and in spite of many attempts at reform.

EDIT: An interesting article on the subject:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5165594/Britains-clas...

And here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303333/Great-Britis...

.. and more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_structure_of_the_United_...

.. and well, this pretty much clinches it - the UK is a classist society:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-22007058

Yeah, no idea what you're talking about. I'll acknowledge that I'm white, male and come from a middle class background, so yeah, pretty privileged. But when I look at who gets "stick" for their background, it's pretty universally people who come from money. Now, that's not to say that there isn't jealousy relating to upbringing; I am the product of a state school, so I am jealous of grammar/scholarship kids, and generally dismissive of private/public school kids. And schooling is significant; every September the Oxbridge recruiters begin the arduous task of trying to get more state school applicants, and that disparity does manifest itself later on in life.

However, it is never explicit. Someone saying "how very working class of you" is not something that would happen. Hell, I'd consider that person uncultured for saying that. If you really want to talk about British culture's reputation, then the first thing you should talk about is not acknowledging things, responding in a passive (aggressive) manner, maybe looking down your nose, but never ever confronting anyone.

Also, I really wonder how much British culture matters in the tech scene. I'm in London, so that probably changes my experiences, but at my start up, we have 4 Italian employees, 1 Swiss guy, and me, the sole "British" member (though half my family is Polish, so go figure). The tech scene in London is incredibly diverse, and at least in my experience, British culture is pretty far from universally prevalent.

Well ..

    ""I am the product of a state school, so I am jealous of grammar/scholarship kids, and generally dismissive of private/public school kids.""

.. this is precisely an example of the factors - class-derived - which I believe limit expansion of the student/technology scene in the UK.

Well given that, of the people I attend university with, work with and generally interact with in the general tech sphere, there are only 2 people to whom I could assign a style of school, it's not too crippling of a prejudice.

I think class and socioeconomic group get seen as the same thing but aren't. Class implies some level of inheritance, you got X because your parents or great-grandparents did Y. Socioeconomic group is something that is more dependent on your current situation - I remember taking the "test" that the BBC had when those articles came out.

I took the test a few times changing my answers based on where I was a few years ago, where I am now, and where I hope my career takes me and also on my mood (sometimes I like X sometimes Y) I managed to span 5 of those 7.

Quite all of the science and engineering roles are still considered oily and lower class. Look at the major disparity in wages and status for a chartered engineer and a GP (family doctor) or a barrister.

The no2 at Martelsham (Uk's bell labs) wife was once asked what sort of car her husband worked on when she mentioned to some one who she met that he was an engineer.

For more a startup mostly tech career fair in London there is the popular Silicon Milkroundabout. https://www.siliconmilkroundabout.com/ Milkround 8 is in November.

last couple of years, the 3beards have been pretty good at organising tech events like 'art hackathons' and hackathons with companies in London.

think a tech scene doesn't need to be exclusive to students.

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