Tech City's silicon dreams

22 September 2011 Last updated at 08:14 GMT The Old Street area is home to many creative industries including art and fashion Can east London really rival Silicon Valley as a place to start technology businesses? Indeed, can it even rival the likes of Cambridge, home to giants like ARM and Autonomy, or Guildford, where some of Britain's best games firms have been born?

That's been the ambition since last November, when David Cameron set out his vision for what's become known as Tech City in a speech at the Tech Hub just off "Silicon Roundabout" - or Old Street as less digital folks know it.

I've been something of a sceptic because, while the area does have a healthy sprinkling of web and new media start-ups, it seems to lack some of the key components of a successful cluster.

There is no world-class university to feed out ideas and ambitious young scientists, no giant anchor company to spin off new firms, no community of angel investors.

But this week I met two men who did a pretty good job of selling the idea that Shoreditch, Stratford and the Olympic Park could soon be the cradle of the Googles and Facebooks of tomorrow.

Eric Van Der Kleij is a serial entrepreneur with a good record of building technology businesses in London, and is now running the Tech City Investment Organisation, appointed by Number 10.

He brought with him to our meeting Bob Schukai, a London-based American technology executive who's acting as an unpaid ambassador for Tech City in the US.

Both were bubbling with enthusiasm about the project, and keen to lay out the evidence that they were already making a difference.

The number of start-ups in the area had more than doubled from 200 to 500, they told me, making Tech City Europe's fastest growing cluster.

Well okay, but rapid growth from a small base does not necessarily mean much - look back at the dotcom bubble and remember all those start-ups claiming 1000% user growth in six months. And gone six months later.

But they were already making a difference to the policy environment.

Number 10, they assured me, was listening to their advice on tax breaks for entrepreneurs and on looser immigration rules for skilled individuals who might start companies here.

Olympic appeal

Yes, but such changes would apply across the UK - what was so special about east London?

Eric explained that there were two things: "One is it's an entirely natural cluster which has grown naturally without help, rather than a greenfield site - the other is the Olympics. We have the opportunity to spend £9bn on the most extraordinary infrastructure."

The new £1.45bn Westfield complex houses more than 300 shops and 70 restaurants

Already, he said, east London was benefiting from better connectivity - BT has upgraded its networks for the area, while Virgin is using it to trial its 1.5 Gb/s broadband service.

I mentioned that colleagues had found that it was just about impossible to make phone calls from the new Stratford Westfield shopping centre and they agreed that better mobile coverage was a priority.

But what was the plan to get business booming? This had four elements, Eric Van Der Kleij assured me, rattling through his plan.

Big corporates like Google and Cisco had committed to invest in the area, with ambitious plans to build research bases employing hundreds of engineers.

Tech City's job will be to make sure those plans are put into action,

Then there will be help for new businesses, including an Entrepreneurs' Festival in November where mentors will help start-ups to refine their business ideas.

Investors were being lured to the area, with showcases of what was on offer.

And finally there was work underway to develop and showcase the talent the area will need, building on an existing set of skills among the coders, designers, artists and new media types already populating the lofts and studios of east London.

I came back to the big question - why east London, not Cambridge, not Newcastle or Manchester?

"My job is to concentrate on London, then make sure it is connected to the rest of the UK," said Eric. "It's a younger cluster - but it has really good assets on its doorstep, customers in the City Of London, the advertising agencies, the post-production industry in Soho."

And Bob Schukai chimed in to underline how much easier it is to market London to American entrepreneurs and investors.

"London is the easiest city to sell around the world," he explained. "If you say pack up your bags and go to Cambridge, think what you're asking your poor lazy American to do - first they've got to get through Heathrow."

The evangelists for Tech City certainly deliver an impressive elevator pitch.

And, from existing businesses like the thriving games firm Moshi Monsters to new ones like Housebites, which promises to reinvent the takeaway, there are already examples of enterprise flowering in the noisy streets around Silicon Roundabout.

But is this already "the Digital Capital of Europe" or "the number one European location for IT and the creative industries", as Tech City's website proclaims?

I think the likes of Cambridge - or Munich, Tallinn and Helsinki - might say come back in 2015 and we'll see about that.

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Megastores endanger Mexico City's markets

MEXICO CITY — For 30 years, Estela Moran has sold almost every edible part of a cow at her meat stand in a neighborhood market. The sale of tripe, feet, tongue and prime beef has put three of her sons through college.

But all is not well at El Torito, the small market in a lower-class Mexico City neighborhood where Moran works. Several stands are vacant. Others are used just for storage. Moran's sales, she said, have gradually declined as U.S.-style supermarkets have flourished.

Across from her post, other meat sellers haven't been at the market in days.

"I don't know where they are," the 60-year-old Moran said as she packed leftover meat in plastic bags. "I'll be here selling until I get sick or I can't do it anymore. We don't earn much, but it's a living. I have customers that depend on me."

Mexico City's neighborhood markets, the rowdy, smelly vibrant landmarks of concrete and corrugated tin that sell everything from cactus salads to pinatas, are struggling as more Mexicans migrate to the relatively more orderly, cleaner, air-conditioned and foreign-owned supermarkets.

Shoppers say supermarkets have easier access, have a wider variety of items, and are safer.

"I know that by coming here we're making a foreign company richer, and the market vendors poorer," said 57-year-old Maria Teresa Hernandez as she left her local Wal-Mart with bags full of chocolate, juices and underwear. "But they have everything here."

Others, however, say the abundant offering of fresh fruits and produce at low prices is what keeps them going back to the local markets.

Most of the markets, like El Torito, were built 50 years ago and have not aged gracefully. A city government survey showed recently that 200 of the 318 markets need urgent repairs to their plumbing and electrical wiring.

More troubling for the more than 70,000 vendors is a steady decline in sales.

Once a staple of this megacity's daily life, the markets sold 80 percent of the city's groceries in the 1950s and '60s compared to 30 percent now, according to the city's Office of Economic Development.

A 2002 study by the National Autonomous University of Mexico estimated that sales had declined nearly 60 percent over a decade.

Nearly 10 years later, university professor Gerardo Torres Salcido says sales have surely dropped even further.

"There are markets that are basically dead," said Guadalupe Loaeza, a columnist for the daily Reforma newspaper and an author who has chronicled Mexican life. "Many are in bad conditions. There are rats and leaks. I remember many years ago no one went to the supermarkets. Now everyone goes to them."

The debate over the future of the markets was reignited in April when Mexico City's mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, successfully pushed an ordinance banning the construction of supermarkets and convenience stores in the middle of neighborhoods, where the markets are located. The ordinance, though, has a three-year life span and will have to be re-approved. Other government officials have proposed ideas such as installing debit card machines in the cash-only markets.

Still, some of the old-style markets thrive.

Even at an off-peak hour, La Merced market in the city's historic center was bursting with activity on a recent afternoon. The city's biggest retail market is a seemingly endless maze of stands. It anchors a commercial area that spills onto the street, where shoppers can find everything from pirated porn to Mexican flags made in China and grilled corn on the cob.

Next to a post of spices, belts are sold. Next to the chili-based mole sauces, children's toys hang. Next to plastic dinosaurs, a taco stand fries up tripe.

The pathways between the stands resemble this city's horrible car traffic, except the human jams here are caused by the carts carrying produce or mobile vendors hawking soda.

Cumbia, salsa and '80s American music booms from stereos some vendors keep. TV shows and movies thunder at high volume. Wires covered in dust are suspended above the stands. Flies hover near the produce.

"We come to markets because it's part of our tradition," said Pedro Ismael Marquez Hernandez, 37, as he shopped with his wife, mother and young daughter. "It would be sad if we lose that. It's part of our heritage."

Marquez Hernandez said he finds prices at the market more affordable, but admitted that he still prefers to buy some products, such as bathroom items, at the supermarket. Though they are more expensive there, they are a better quality, he said. He also said that sometimes sales at the local grocery stores are too good to pass up.

In this city of nearly 9 million, there are 7-Elevens or the like seemingly every other block. Walmart de Mexico has become the biggest private employer in the country, providing jobs to about 176,000 people, according to the discount giant's website.

Walmart began expanding its presence here in 1991, opening a Sam's Club. It now has 1,880 locations in Mexico, which includes its flagship stores, the Mexican chains it bought and 364 restaurants.

In 2010, it recorded $26 billion ($334.5 billion pesos) in sales from Mexico and its Central American branches.

Edgar Alvarez, director of the association of public markets, blames the markets' decline partly on the government, which he says caters to international companies while discriminating against markets.

When foreign companies open a supermarket, "they fix up sidewalks," he said. "They should do for us what they do for the multinationals."

At the same time, the government doesn't allow the street markets to accept food stamps, which translates into millions of pesos in lost income, Alvarez said.

He said banning construction of supermarkets and convenience stores is a move that is too little, too late.

At Moran's market one recent afternoon, a mutt of a dog ate scraps of chicken. Children ran around aimlessly. Vendors peeled onions. The stands were closing. It was quiet.

In a corner, the market has a shrine to the Virgin Mary. The aroma of mangos and prickly pear fills the air.

Angelina Espejel, who has run a dry cleaning stand at El Torito for eight years, thinks markets will survive whatever is thrown at them. They still serve too many people from the working class, she said.

"Can you imagine the unemployment if the markets disappeared?" Espejel asked.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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NYC’s Website Reinvented by the City’s First Hackathon

About 75 developers from across the United States (and at least one from Canada) accepted New York City Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne’s invitation to spend 36 hours of last weekend envisioning a better nyc.gov.

The city’s first ever hackathon offered little incentive: There were no cash prizes, no iPad giveaways, and the city has not committed to using any of the designs to replace the website it launched in 1996 and last redesigned more than five years ago. Five of 14 teams whose designs were chosen by judges for various honors will be thanked personally by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in meetings this week.

“Really the goal was to bridge the worlds of government and technology and having a dialog,” Sterne says. “This really showed what people want.”

So what do people want? Most of the winning designs’ homepages focus on search, mirroring Bing and Google. Sterne saw: StackOverflow-like forums that encourage users to help each other, as well as gamification, location and social elements. In other words, these are the trends you’d expect from coders working with APIs from Google, Bit.ly, Foursquare and other popular web services.

New York City also introduced two new APIs at the event: one that works with 311 and another that constantly updates apps that use the city’s more than 400 open data sets with the latest changes.

Here are the five winning designs. What changes would you like to see on your city’s government website?

For comparison, here is a photo of NYC’s current website:

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