‘Future Tech City’, held at the Brit School, was run by Croydon Tech City, an initiative which aims to bring together the tech community in Croydon and encourage further business and investment.
Director Paul Barnett spoke at the event, alongside the Financial Times’ CTO John O’Donovan and Google’s Matt Gaunt.
Paul Barnett said: “We have a real shortage of coding skills in this country and we want to work with Future Tech City to promote homegrown talent.
“Our control panel is the heart of our business at ICUK and for us to keep doing what we’re doing we want more people with the right skills to build for us.”
The event was held to introduce parents, teachers and governors in south London to better tech education and encourage them to start a code club in their school. Code clubs are a nationwide scheme where volunteers work with 9-11 year olds once a week to teach coding skills.
Paul’s interest in computers began when on work experience as a teenager and led him to build ICUK with co-founder Leslie Costar when he was still a university student. Twelve years later, ICUK is a team of 14 offering broadband, telecoms and hosting through 600 resellers and Paul has turned his eye to working with apprentices.
“We’ve started working with apprentices so that we can teach those skills ourselves and train up people to work for us.”
Paul has been a tech expert with Croydon Tech City since it began in September 2012 and has seen the positive impact it has had.
“Croydon Tech City is about nurturing the existing tech community in Croydon and encouraging collaboration.
“Events like Future Tech City help us to influence the next generation.”