London's Silicon Roundabout
Keep your Silicon Valley -- this is London's Silicon Roundabout. Named and first mapped out in July 2008 by Matt Biddulph (then CTO of Dopplr, now at Nokia), it comprised 15 startups, all based around the Old Street roundabout in north-east London. Wired thought this might not be the full story. So we asked researcher Georgina Voss to dig further, and crowdsourced leads from users of Wired.co.uk.
We were faithful to Biddulph's original 15: we favoured independents over international branches, start-ups over big firms. The resulting 85 firms make for a new geography of UK entrepreneurship.
The hub emerged from a series of factors, says Voss. "The presence of tech and creative firms from the 80s; centrality; institutions like the BBC and the RCA; connections to San Francisco and Silicon Valley; and the dot-com boom and bust. Unlike other tech hubs, there are no direct feeds into local universities - rather a culture of self-education and mutual support."
See the Image Here: London's Silicon Roundabout
Photographer: Jason Hawkes
Camera: Nikon D3S
ISO: 1000
Lens: 14-24mm @ 20mm
Exposure: 1/640 @ 2.8F, shot using a stabilised mount
Height: 1,100 ft
Software: Lightroom 2.6
Helicopter: Twin-engined Eurocopter AS355
Time of day: 1550 hrs