
Scottish Tech Map - jbms
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dAWR1pabLYIMMuZs5noi7OIOV-g8fzTl-FdzVXVYoCU/edit?pref=2&pli=1
======
jarofgreen
Hello, I'm the founder of
[https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/](https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/) mentioned
in the events tab.

We are a open site listing tech events around Scotland. Open means anyone can
add an event, like a wiki. We can import data from suitable open sources, and
most importantly we have many Open Data feeds. Our data is reused many times
by many different people and sites.

We are about to celebrate our 4th birthday, and are the main listings site in
Scotland. There is a great community around, and we are proud to be part of
that (we are based in Edinburgh). Our software is Open Source to!

Give me a shout if any questions, Thanks, James

~~~
onion2k
Awesome work. Down here in England we have something very similar -
[https://www.techdiary.co.uk](https://www.techdiary.co.uk) \- it might be
worthwhile reaching out to that site for some sort of data sharing
arrangement, especially for the London events.

~~~
jarofgreen
Think I've seen that before - I'll check and reach out. Always happy to chat -
email hello at the website.

We're not just Scotland, we have a lot of events listed in Sheffield to.

It's an interesting one - looking at the site, we have more tech features in
terms of working with events data. One of the big things we do that we haven't
seen many others do is have a system where anyone with a user account can add
and edit data directly. We think this is very important - if only one or a few
ppl can work on events the burden on them to make sure it's kept up to date
becomes very big. If this burden is spread over many editors, then "many hands
make light work". (We also have several other tricks to make sure our data is
kept up to date!)

That said tho, for a community site like this the community is more important!
It's very interesting to see the variety of approaches that are taken. If
people from an area want to talk about using Open Tech Calendar in their area
or have feedback, do get in touch.

------
jbms
What it is:

Freely editable google spreadsheet with information on where tech is happening
in Scotland. Currently lists >300 companies and 90 groups/events.

What it's not:

\- A startup/VC map.

Challenges:

\- getting people to add/curate existing content (current theory: I think
people browse mostly on phones, and can't edit without installing the Google
Sheets app), as I can't put a lot of time into it.

\- better quality categorisation of companies

\- finding dev teams within organisations like local government

\- identifying what's missing (my gut feel is there's easily another 300-1k
companies to add, but most existing entries have come through business
directories or searches on twitter for "developers/python/java/etc near me").

How it began:

The wikipedia article on Silicon Glen is short and out of date.

I was finding out about companies geographically near me in similar industries
that I just wasn't coming across unless they were hiring.

I heard of Eden Shochat, who successfully crowdsourced the Israeli startup
scene in a Google spreadsheet.

~~~
jbms
Google spreadsheets can't handle the concurrent users coming from HN.

To add:

Try this form to add a company:
[http://goo.gl/forms/5OEg6TahHdLrPmaG3](http://goo.gl/forms/5OEg6TahHdLrPmaG3)

And this form to add an event:
[http://goo.gl/forms/LI36LptYhqbuudY83](http://goo.gl/forms/LI36LptYhqbuudY83)

------
s_dev
Not sure this is relevant but it might be helpful to people looking for a
similar project like this to work on:

Heres a curated tech calendar for Dublin, Ireland.

[https://www.startupdigest.com/digests/dublin](https://www.startupdigest.com/digests/dublin)

The Dublin startup commissioner just launched this is week as well:

[http://www.techireland.org/](http://www.techireland.org/)

Basically a database of the Irish tech scene.

~~~
jbms
That's really cool!

It speaks volumes for how well connected and supported the startup scene is
there that Dublin has a funded "startup commissioner". We're lagging a lot
behind in Scotland at the moment.

------
mdhayes
Really cool list. I'm founder of RookieOven -
[https://rookieoven.com](https://rookieoven.com) \- a coworking space for tech
startups in Glasgow based in a Victorian shipyard.

If anyone is ever in Glasgow and looking to meet the local community feel free
to pay us a visit.

~~~
billybofh
I'm just down the road - I might pop past at some point for a nosey :-) The
only things of note I'd ever spotted in Govan were Titan Props and Film City -
live and learn!

~~~
mdhayes
More than welcome. We're in the recently restored Fairfield Shipyard Offices
on Govan Road so not been open for too long. We also do a monthly meetup for
local startups in The Raven on the first Monday of each month.

------
abstractbeliefs
Very proud to see the medical company I work for listed here, and not even by
me.

Optos was acquired last year by Nikon, and we're going strong and expanding
into new tech for devices we're releasing this year and next.

We're hiring a few positions right now if shooting lasers into people's eyes
to _save_ their sight is your kind of thing: [http://www.optos.com/en-
GB/About-us/Careers/Europe/](http://www.optos.com/en-GB/About-
us/Careers/Europe/)

------
gergderkson
This is great. We love being part of the Scottish tech scene. There are some
really great meetups around Edinburgh and Glasgow areas too.

------
maaarghk
On this topic, is anyone in the Glasgow area doing anything cool with Golang?
I'm looking to dive in and wondering if there is any kind of local community
around it - travelling to Edinburgh for meetups is inconvenient to say the
least!

------
RubyWrangler
Love it! Scotland has a fantastic tech scene which I'm super happy to be part
of :)

------
archieb
There's also a list of Edinburgh-based software companies on
[http://www.nobugs.org/deved/](http://www.nobugs.org/deved/), though the last
update was 2015-09.

------
jplahn
Very cool! I've been looking for something like this for a while in hopes that
I could get a better feel for the tech industry through Scotland. I lived
there for 7 years during middle school and high school and I'm always flirting
with the idea of heading back. Sadly my EU residency lapsed, making it a
little more difficult (not that it would help for much longer..).

It would be great to have more sorting options, particularly if I wanted to
get back to the Granite city :).

------
urbik
Calendar of events for belgium:
[https://hackeragenda.be/?section=all](https://hackeragenda.be/?section=all)
(source code:
[https://github.com/psycojoker/hackeragenda](https://github.com/psycojoker/hackeragenda),
fork and enjoy o/)

------
deepnet
Great resource, thanks for posting this.

Would like to see more Scottish robotics startups & meetups.

------
cdman
I'm building something similar for Romania: [http://www.it-
events.ro/](http://www.it-events.ro/) (very early stage ATM).

~~~
jarofgreen
Just saw your comment - you interested in Open Source software for this? :-)
[http://ican.openacalendar.org/](http://ican.openacalendar.org/)

------
sparkzilla
How do we add to the list? The Companies page doesn't seem to be editable.

Perhaps you should consider adding the data to a simple WordPress site. I'd be
happy to set that up for you on my server.

~~~
davb
Maybe a better idea would be a Google Forms instance to submit listings, then
some manual validation and normalisation, and s script to pull it from the
Google Docs spreadsheet and generate a static web page. Makes for cheap and
easy hosting, and you could easily map the events and companies on Google Maps
or OSM if you add a lat/long field.

That way, it'd be easy to submit and even easier to consume the data.

And if you kept the dataset open, people could reuse it in a bunch of useful
ways.

~~~
jarofgreen
Did you have any comments on
[https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/](https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/) ? We are
not static* or Google Docs but we do the rest - people can add, we work with
lat/lngs on maps and have many Open Data feeds that already have lots of
users.

* Tho last year we did start playing with a static site generator for fun, tho it's not production ready yet.

~~~
davb
I incidentally found Open Tech Calendar for the first time a few days ago and
really like it.

Besides a few small design niggles, I think it's great.

The data export (and the fact the data is in the public domain) is really
useful. The lack of adverts (besides a little sponsor shout out) makes me much
more comfortable contributing data here. I appreciate the OSM maps.

Honestly, you really don't need to go the static route. That was perhaps a
more useful suggestion for the OP as they don't have any dynamic web
infrastructure in place and it would offer a quick win in terms of usability.
Same goes for Google docs - it was a good for the OP's situation but it's not
necessary in your case, especially with your strong export functionality.
Stick with dynamic, you've done a good job there!

If I could make a couple of little suggestions:

1\. A few wee design tweaks might help: on desktop browsers the font size is
really big in places (24px in the header explanation text), the background
image is a little distracting and difficult to make out, and the max width of
1200px reduces readability a bit for some users). Nothing major, just some
little tweaks.

2\. I only found the site recently and wish I'd come across it before now. Do
what you're doing here - keep reaching out to people in the community.

3\. Slim down the terms and conditions a bit and adopt an open license. The
footer says that event data is in the public domain, but this term is a little
fuzzy and the legal meaning isn't always clear. On the terms page, you talk
about a limited license. I'd suggest going with CC0 [0] for event data (it's
like public domain, but with specific and universally understood legal
meaning). And perhaps just state that all rights are reserved with regards to
site name and logos. It makes things clearer for people who might want to use
the data.

[0]
[https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)

~~~
jarofgreen
Hello. Thanks for your comments :-)

Don't worry, Open Tech Calendar will never go Static - there are to many
features that just won't work. However, the static site was something we tried
as an experiment to make us look afresh at this problem. We may carry on with
it someday, but it has already driven a bunch of code quality improvements in
the main app which is great.

If you are interested, could you join
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/openacalendar](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/openacalendar)
? This is for the Open Source software, and we discuss features and design
issues there. Very happy to have any constructive criticism discussion there!
But let me try and address some points very quickly now, tho it's late and I'm
off to a hackday tomorrow! (That's the Excuses in :-) )

1\. I want to recheck all font sizes - they've all been picked piecemeal. I do
want to make sure the fonts are slightly large tho - while I have no problem
with lower size fonts I know some people with vision problems do.

For the max width, do you want it wider than 1200px? We actually have just
done some design work that touches on this:
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/openacalendar/HvsKB3...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/openacalendar/HvsKB3IXmag)

The image isn't really meant to be fully detailed, it's just to add a bit of
texture. I was thinking of trying some different images, maybe it's time to!

2\. Thanks! :-)

3\. I would like to be clearer on the legal side, but I have some questions of
my own about legal points and could really do with a discussion with a
friendly lawyer! But rest assured I want the data to be open for all sensible
uses.

Anyway, hopefully this makes sense. Please do join the email list or email
hello at the site domain with more points. Thanks, James

~~~
davb
Hi, well thanks for listening :)

I'll take a little look at the Google Group tomorrow and would like to give
some feedback! I think the project is fantastic.

I've got a couple of little follow-up comments on accessibility...

One important thing to remember about visually impaired users is that they
almost always have their base font size in their browser set high already, or
are using a magnifier. So 150% of an already large font becomes an unusably
ginormous font. While the intention is definitely good, it can have the
opposite effect (I speak from experience working with both technical and non-
technical family members who are partially sighted). A base size of 14-16px
(depending on font), increasing to 1.5em or 2em for headers works really well,
and doesn't overcompensate when visually impaired users have their own font
magnifying solutions in place (as they most often do because they're needed
for the vast majority of websites).

And in terms of the max width, I'd definitely take it down from 1200px. Long
lines are harder to read [0 (also a really good example of readable width)].
Playing with the site in Chrome dev tools, "max-width: 54em;" works really
well. It stops the right-aligned/floated elements being across a wide chasm
from the left-aligned elements, and it keeps line lengths at a really readable
limit. And by using ems instead of pixels, if visually impaired users have a
higher base font size (which doesn't scale non-text elements with sizes in
pixels), it won't distort the page layout.

[0] [http://baymard.com/blog/line-length-
readability](http://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability)

~~~
jarofgreen
> almost always have their base font size in their browser set high already

I've come across people who don't - but still, maybe this is generally the way
to go.

Thanks for your detailed feedback and encouragement. I've made 2 issues at
[https://github.com/OpenACalendar/OpenACalendar-Web-
Core/issu...](https://github.com/OpenACalendar/OpenACalendar-Web-
Core/issues/649) and [https://github.com/OpenACalendar/OpenACalendar-Web-
Core/issu...](https://github.com/OpenACalendar/OpenACalendar-Web-
Core/issues/650) \- but if you had time to comment on the Google Group that
would be great :-)

------
soroso
What's the point of this thread? Honest question.

I have the feeling it is pointless keeping such map from the perspective of
Brexit. Soon Scotland will be off of Eu, and all these businesses will be
facing very different realities in short time. I would refrain make business
with companies with whom I'd face more taxes or red tape just because their
countries would left the EU.

So what are we trying to do here? Explore more the Scottish market? The soon-
to-be limited UK market?

I am lost. Could someone explain it to me?

~~~
jbms
The point is to raise awareness of a basic tool that tracks Scotland's tech
industry. That is of interest to lots of people.

Potential uses of the tool itself:

\- Helping people find potential job opportunities in Scotland

\- Helping tech companies in Scotland find other tech companies within
Scotland

\- Getting people excited about some of what's happening in Scotland. It's a
small country but it has some $1b tech companies and lots more are on the way.

\- Encouraging international companies to start divisions/design
houses/engineering centres in Scotland due to the quantity of comparatively-
cheap talent. This is happening a lot already.

If things are getting harder internationally for Scottish businesses (which I
don't believe or expect for the tech industry), then surely this becomes even
more important as those companies will want to partner more within Scotland?

------
smpetrey
Is there a list of tech companies/agencies for NYC out there? Asking for a
friend.

------
dandrino
Wouldn't wiki be a better format for this than a Google sheet?

~~~
jbms
Any suggestions for ones that are easy and free to setup?

