Is Belfast even playing 'catch-up'?

DUBLIN 4 November 2010: David Rowan, Editor of Wired UK had just returned home to London from a trip to Dublin and wrote

I spent the weekend in Dublin among some of the tech world's stars ... to network and share their visions alongside a further fifty or so venture capitalists, angel investors, journalists and mentors.

The event -- called F.ounders ... was an extraordinary gathering of talent and energy with one big goal: to help the entrepreneurs network with the locals, and so boost Dublin's own tech economy...
There are some serious lessons to be drawn from the event's success for the UK ... the event began with the entrepreneurs themselves, and made them central to the proceedings ...
Second, [organiser 27 year old Paddy] Cosgrave's team won local cross-agency cooperation to target a clear and persuasive offer to the entrepreneurs coming from out of town:... The CEO of Enterprise Ireland ... the city mayor and parliamentarians ...

Much was made of a persuasive 12.5 per cent corporation tax that founders would enjoy - and if they still had doubts, each delegate was given a box containing a (physical) key to Ireland, with the offer of two free return flights if they wanted to come back to find out more. 

No wonder Niklas Zennstrom told local media that there were ''a lot of good initiatives'' in Ireland to stimulate innovation and investment, and that ''There is no reason why the next billion dollar company cannot come from Europe, or Ireland." It wasn't too long ago that he was telling Wired that London was where the action was... better let's not get complacent, then.

See the full article here.

LONDON 22 OCTOBER 2009: David Rowan Editor of Wired UK asks readers to Help us map London's Silicon Roundabout 

We have an ambitious project we’re working on for Wired magazine for which we’d welcome your input. We’re trying to map out the creative/tech quarter that’s sprung up around Old Street and Shoreditch in north-east London – and we want to know which businesses we’ve missed. So let’s crowdsource this together. The final product will be a beautiful, shiny pull-out map in a future edition of the magazine.

First, a bit of history.

The term "Silicon Roundabout" is attributed to Dopplr’s Matt Biddulph, who defined it last year as "the ever-growing community of fun startups in London's Old Street area". He created a Google Map in July 2008 charting the relevant firms in the area. 

Read the full article here.

And as part of the outcome of the map of Silicon Roundabout? This "Think Big" article but more importantly Prime Ministerial support and the impetus for Tech City UK

It is time all the digital creative industries Tech, Media, Entertainment, Advertising, Film began talking to each other and for Assembly and Belfast City Council along with Invest NI and all the other representative agencies to take action.