A couple of weeks back I was asked to speak at TechWorld, a conference and expo organised by UK Trade & Investment. This year's event included the addition of the first TechCity Entrepreneur's Festival.

The week-long festival incorporated a bootcamp, access to investors, a giant get-together with Silicon Valley Comes to the UK, pitch training and a pitch competition. In the light of so many overseas companies heading in to London, I thought a whistlestop tour of the UK's digital sector, location of clusters and London, in particular might be handy.

Here's the presentation with all the research referenced. The work around the growth of micro-global firms from London Met university highlights a growing trend of international firms using London as their commercial base, using the relatively easy legal frameworks, access to capital/staff and timezone-friendly location to their advantage.

Like I say, just a whistlestop tour, given the chance it'd be good to pull together further information from outside of London. It's clear that the South East dominates the digital  scene in pure numbers, but I'd love to get a sense of the health of the specialist clusters outside the M25.

Whilst I have to admit to some initial scepticism about TechCity, the focus on the area is definitely having an impact with the number of firms growing, between 250 and 600, depending on whose figures and methodology used. Either way, it's all in the right direction.

Having said that, the Tech in TechCity, might be slightly mis-leading with a large number of agencies and digital-focused agencies including UX, creative, strategy and marketing making up the numbers. One to watch, and let's hope it continues to grow, the UK's economy certainly needs the inward investment and youth employment shot-in-the-arm this initiative offers.

Photo (c) Duedil's London Startup Map. Originally posted on my blog at Chinwag.