Take seven cities, a group of economic development professionals; put them in a room together, throw in a Lead Expert and you have a recipe for a shared vision of a brighter future.
The Digital Media Centre in Barnsley was the venue for the Tech Revolution “Kick Off” Meeting with representatives of all the partners participating in a range of discussions and working groups to create a manifesto for change in each city by sharing skills, experience and expertise.
The Immersive Bootcamp programme for the three day event included a number of activities to enable the partners get a full understanding of the good practice and included a number of presentations from each part of the Enterprising Barnsley Team. The partners were introduced to the various economic development activities carried out by the Barnsley Team, with an explanation of what had worked well and what hadn’t worked so well in the transformation of the Barnsley economy. Participants were able to follow a time line of the Barnsley journey over the last ten years, leading to “TechTown” and the proposal for the Digital Campus.
The partners were challenged to look at their own local offers and products and to share with the partners their own successes and failures, and to consider the practices that would potentially make their own service better. They were then given the opportunity to begin to arrange work transfers and shadowing between themselves so that they could see practical economic development activities that might energise and revolutionise economic development in their own cities, and build capacity in their own teams.
In addition the partners were given a full background into the process of URBACT Transfer Networks and informed of what was expected of them over the next two years of the project. The event was facilitated by Alison Partridge and Bela Kezy who are the nominated Lead and Ad Hoc experts for the Tech Revolution project.
Tracey Johnson, project lead for Tech Revolution said, “It was a pleasure for Barnsley to host a group of experienced economic development professionals from across Europe here at the Digital Media Centre in Barnsley. We shared some great ideas which we hope will develop into an on-going collaboration between a group of like-minded people who can continue to share ideas long after the transfer network is over. Everyone here sees the development of a strong SME based economy enhanced by the competitive benefits that digital has to offer as the future, this is what we all share”.
