But if you don’t know it then probably not many UK people will attend..

I’m not working in a UK company but actually I’m searching a job in UK (currently living outside UK).

In the wake of Beers and Innovation, my company decided to tackle the issue of UK Internet start-ups being isolated and, often, effectively invisible.

Jigsaw, a wiki to support the development of the UK new media industry, is here:

http://www.futurescape.co.uk/wiki/

The rapidly-growing list of innovative (ie roughly Web 2.0) companies is here:

http://www.futurescape.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Internet

You’re cordially invited to add yourself to the blogs page

http://www.futurescape.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Blogs

and to pass this on as an invitation to anyone who might be interested in contributing. Official launch is this Weds at Wiki Weds in London:

http://www.socialtext.net/wikiwed/index.cgi?london_wikiwed_8_march_2006

Regards,

Colin Donald
Director
Futurescape

Thanks for the mention. We wanted to share what we learned when we bootstrapped DropSend (www.dropsend.com) with all the attendees at the Summit (www.carsonworkshops.com/summit).

When I introduced the Summit, I said that we were tired of everyone talking about the Valley. There’s tons going on elsewhere in the world - especially Europe.

As your readers probably know, they can grab the MP3s from here.

Take care,
Ryan

I couldn’t post my comment as it thinks there are dodgy words in it, so I put it here: http://www.joncollins.net/wordpress/?p=170

Cheers,

Jon

Inspired by the gorgeous sunny weather, I looked up the origin of whingeing this morning and found the most detail on US site word-detective.com:

“In any case, “whinge” is basically the same word as our good old-fashioned “whine,” meaning “to complain peevishly.” Both whinge” and “whine” are ultimately from the Germanic “hwinan,” meaning “to whine.” The “ge” ending of “whinge” is evidence of its origin as the Scots and Northern English form of “whine,” much as “clenge” and “ringe” were at one time the Northern forms of “cleanse” and “rinse.”
It comes directly from the Old English word “hwinsian,” and first appeared in its modern English spelling in the early 18th century.”

So it’s a longstanding tradition round these parts
Dennis - I agree with much of what you say, and London/UK obviously doesn’t have the scale of the US or the Far East/Asia. But in terms of what we are fostering, is the discussion here fostering realism or pessimism and what’s the difference? If it’s a self-fufilling prophecy, what’s the point? (uh oh, I feel an existential haze enveloping me…)

A couple of things though:

If you look at London it is populated by people of all nations. Isn’t your point about the Valley that it’s got a global mix of technology professionals - which isn’t the same as being generally cospmopolitan, which London must be the epitome of..? Was that your original meaning?

Given what Ryan Carson said at The Future Of Web Apps about the costs of geting a start-up off the ground, is lack of VC backing being over-emphasised as a UK-specific stumbling block on the pathway to success?

Not everything begins in the Valley Stateside - Del.icio.us recently had to up sticks and move there from its home turf of New York so Joshua Schachter could stop making money in Wall St (in his day job) and start making it with Yahoo! There are other examples too numerous to mention but I thought I’d pick that one becuase of the Web Apps conference connection.

Also, mobile innovation has been totally ignored in this discussion and that’s an area where Europe excels, along with the Far East. Mobilista Russell Beattie recently had a few timely words to say about the whole Web 2.0 thing, that might float your boat Dennis…

Cheers,
Deirdre

Love the blog - and i agree - we need to get our act together (we can’t let the valley have all the fun)

The web2.0 scene is coming on in Ireland - we’ve got the govt bodies clued into the models @ web2.0
(see this pic for example - http://battellemedia.com/archives/001988.php)

Some Irish companies in the web2.0 space

- http://www.webresint.com/
- http://www.newbay.com
- http://www.nooked.com [disclose - my company]
- http://www.infacta.com
- http://www.tablane.com
- http://www.my-me.com
- http://http://www.ciceronetworks.com/ (mobile 2.0)

and no doubt i’ve missed some

Regards
Fergus

Interesting post! – we were just discussing other UK web start-ups this afternoon.

At the risk of self promotion, please check out “Reevoo”:http://www.reevoo.com/. We are a funded UK web start up, based in London. Our aim is to become the UK’s leading brand of customer reviews, based around trust, relevancy and transparency.

To date we collect reviews from two sources, from confirmed purchasers from our retail partners and we have just started aggregating reviews from the “edge” – in essence from blogs.

We now have reviews covering in excess of 2000 electrical products and have served our 1 millionth ReevooMark impression on our partner’s sites.

Hope you like what you see, Reevoo is still in its infancy and changing all the time.

Best

Richard

It’d be great to see more entreprenurial activity in the UK, but our (my) attitude is usually more conservative and risk-averse. I have no idea why that should be - our history is built on empire, trade and enterprise.

We need the web 2.0 21st century equivalent of Lloyd’s coffee house…