The computer industry in Scotland - Silicon Glen

Traditionally, Silicon Glen focussed on the inward investment of electronic companies. We are now seeing the problems caused by such a narrow strategy. Viasystems, National Semiconductor and the like are foreign companies which are now closing down, with devastating knock on effects for the Scottish economy, an economy which has focussed too narrowly on such industries. The current trend towards massive growth in call centres is another case in point - whilst these provide quality jobs in the short term, their long term prospects are in grave doubt due to the growth of automated systems and electronic commerce on the Internet as well as outsourcing from Scotland's Silicon Glen to India's Silicon Plateau.

It is estimated that like electronics, there will be a scaling down of call centre jobs. An article in PC Week (29-Sept-98, P7) indicated that 50% of front line jobs (including call centres) will disappear by 2010. There is hope though. Scottish software, whilst still relatively small scale, is starting to grow thanks to the efforts of the Scottish Software Federation, now ScotlandIS. However, we still live in a climate where people are often expected to gamble the roof over their head to start a business in Scotland and at the same time foreign investors are paid thousands of pounds of money in grants for each job created. It is hardly surprising therefore that there is such an imbalance in the Scottish software business towards foreign companies at the expense of home grown talent. Public sector money is also often surrounded by so much red tape that it isn't unknown for the funds to have to hand the money back to investors because insufficient businesses were eligible to apply.

In an age when we should be attempting to eliminate ageism and sexism in the workplace and to encourage people to balance work and family life, when you start a business there is completely rampant sexism (funds only availale for women), ageism (funds only available to young people) and no special help at all for anyone balancing a startup with a family! Talk about conflicting government messages!

For business startup information, see [1.10].

Magazines and Journals

NB Magazine will provide you with news about the computer industry in Silicon Glen, Scotland
http://www.nb-mag.com/

Scotland's Premier IT Trade Magazine
http://www.computerheadline.com/

Scottish Development International

http://www.lis.org.uk/
The body dealing with inward investment in Scotland

Scotland IS

The trade organisation for Scottish hi-technology
http://www.scotlandis.com/

Website project management and e-commerce

Please contact mailto: craig@siliconglen.com
Chartered IT Professional, PRINCE2 Practitioner

Website link monitoring and quality assurance

http://www.siliconglen.com/software/links.html

Website hosting

http://www.xcalibre.co.uk/
(the company hosting the siliconglen.com website)

Web Warehouse Ltd UK web hosting
http://www.web-warehouse.net/

Content filtering and security

http://www.bloxx.com/

Helpdesk Software

For Helpdesk Software, visit Serio Ltd, based in Livingston
http://www.seriosoft.com/

Object Oriented software estimation

http://www.tassc-solutions.com/

Now-Business

http://www.sharedbiz.net/
The forum for entrepreneurs to meet venture capitalists.

The British Computer Society

Gain computing qualificaitons and professional status, e.g. Chartered Engineer or Chartered IT professional
http://www.bcs.org/

An Interesting Read

http://digg.com/
http://reddit.com/
http://www.scottishdevelopers.com/
http://www.agilescotland.com/

Interesting Blogs

http://www.robertlally.com/
http://www.clarkeching.com/
http://www.mattcutts.com/
http://www.siliconglen.com/news/ (news, blog)

Scotland Internet Guide

http://www.siliconglen.com/ (General site)
http://www.siliconglen.com/companies/
http://www.siliconglen.com/usability/ (web design guidelines)
http://www.siliconglen.com/usability/pants.html (The Pants Website award)

The Chartered Management Institute

Gain managerial qualifications and professional status, e.g. Chartered Manager http://www.managers.org.uk/

WOW Web Competition

For Scottish businesses, a competition run by the Scottish Enterprise network with corporate sponsors.
http://www.scottish-enterprise.com/wow/
The winners are usually websites with lots of glitz and trendy technologies rather than websites which are useful from a consumer's point of view (e.g. one recent winner didn't even have an email address on their site - doh!)

Combat Spam - The Spam Filter

http://www.scot.demon.co.uk/spam-filter.html
The Spam Filter - Mentioned on TV across the US.

Combat spam - sign the free petition

http://www.siliconglen.com/spampetition/
Embarrass leading vendors into doing something

http://www.thespamfilter.com/
http://www.spam-filter.com/
http://www.themailfilter.com/
http://www.theemailfilter.com/
http://www.themailfilter.com/
http://www.the-mail-filter.com/
http://www.the-spam-filter.com/
http://www.filterjunkmail.com/

E-mail

To keep abreast of developments about the internet community in Scotland, please join the Scotland internet community email list by sending a message with the single word 'subscribe' to
mailto: scotland-request@scotland.org

Jobs

For information on jobs in Scotland, see [1.15]

Free Press Release Distribution

http://www.prweb.com/

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