Dan Discusses...Birmingham Tech Week

With all the excitement around Birmingham Tech Week, we’ve been speaking to our developers to get their thoughts on the future of the tech sector.
Today, we’re speaking to Dan about his role and the city where he is based.

-

Hi Dan, Birmingham Tech Week is a great chance for people to learn more about the tech world and what’s going on in Birmingham specifically.

So…what makes Birmingham a great hub for software companies?


I think one of the main things Birmingham has going for it is that it is a large city with a very compact city centre, and we’ve got some great hubs like Aston Business Park that make in-person networking and collaboration very easy.

It also doesn’t hurt that prices here are much more reasonable than London, which is appealing to businesses and homeowners alike.

With the shift to remote, being based so centrally nationally is also very useful as it allows a business to take on employees who would be willing to travel in once or twice a week.


You’ve had a big role in the creation of Wordskii version two, what are the features you’re most proud of?

One of our main priorities was finding a way to distribute work more fairly amongst interpreters while still filling them quickly according to our client’s needs. I won’t get into the secret sauce, but I think we’ve made a great start, and we’ll continue to listen to our clients and interpreters to improve upon it.

Word360 could be described as a technology company, but with all the inhouse staff, not to mention thousands of interpreters on-hand, it’s an organisation which is built on the power of human interaction too.

How do you see this relationship developing?

You’re totally right that the strength of Word360 is its relationships with both our interpreters and clients.

The intention is with the launch of v2 that Wordskii will evolve to become its own business entity separate from Word360, focussing on technology but keeping the same ‘people first’ mentality that has made Word360 a success.

Thanks, finally could you make any predictions for how technology will transform the economies of cities in the future, or even smaller towns?

It’s hard to get away from Covid, which has brought possibly the biggest change in geographical economic trends since industrial-era urbanisation.

Now that many companies need less offices or are going officeless, I believe we’ll see more shared office spaces and complexes, which could end up being great for more cross-company collaboration.

Dan, thanks for all your insights.