back to article Shoreditch's sparkle smokescreen leaves BBC journo 'tech-struck'

“I haven’t felt so good having spoken to a businessman for ten minutes in about 25 years. That’s not normally how I feel! So thanks very much!” And thanks to you, BBC presenter Fi Glover, for sharing the feel-good factor with us. Glover was bringing the miracle of Shoreditch’s internet companies into the nation’s living rooms …

COMMENTS

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  1. Jon Press

    Her website...

    figlover.co.uk

    ... would appear to be aimed at ficus fanciers.

  2. Dr Who

    At last!

    I finally have an answer to that awkward question "So what is it that you do then?". "Why, as it 'appens, I'm a tech-enabled business zoomer!".

    Guaranteed to pull with that one. Well, at least with Fi Glover anyway.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Doug Rocket's 'Place'

    Dear Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris,

    Now that the prophecies of Nathan Barley Series 1 have come to pass and the idiots have in fact risen, the time for Series 2 has arrived. There seems to be no shortage of material for you. Please get to work.

    Now time for my 'Ape Hour'

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Glover was doing geek radio almost 20 years ago

    Together with her accomplice Gideon Coe, the fragrant Ms Glover presented the best ever show on the best ever radio station. Geeks of a certain age that lived in or around London in the mid 90s will recall the weekly visit of Dave Green to Glover and Coe's breakfast show in the halcyon days of GLR.

    Why isn't radio that good still around?

    1. Florence

      Re: Glover was doing geek radio almost 20 years ago

      Gideon Coe is still broadcasting: BBC 6 Music - Mon-Thu from 9pm to midnight.

      I can't compare his show there to his and Ms Glover's breakfast show of the mid 90s, but it's excellent, one of my favourites on 6 music.

  5. Colin Millar
    Boffin

    Let me fix that

    "the alternative is following in the footsteps of such industries as music and publishing " which continue to laugh all the way to the bank.

  6. Mage Silver badge

    Phew

    I listen to R4. Glad I missed that!

    The "Internet" doesn't make ANY money...

    Replacing old Skool mail order catalogues advertised in Magazines with Sales of the SAME stuff simply using the eCommerce as a Tool makes Money. Buy Shares in Couriers not dot.com bubbles.

    Selling Advertising space on visited websites makes money.

    Selling instant downloads of Music, Software, eBooks makes money. (Video possibly the best model is instant streaming of lower quality and a DVD or Bluray in the post till everyone has Fibre and there is an infrastructure to support it,)

    How many Facebook/Twitter/Googles are there? Also they make their money from adverts and being near monopolies. You will lose your shirt trying to copy them.

    1. Naughtyhorse
      Thumb Up

      Re: Phew

      I too listen to R4 but unlike you i did catch the programme. i spent about ten minutes shouting at the radio as each and every bongism was trotted out. finaly i crashed through anger into a blissfull efortless sense of.moral and intelctual supeiority. poor figlover bless!! and the bongolite she was interviewing (some kind of hi tech scalper) Was tres droll. even managing to work the 'fail hard fail often' mantra into his outpourings.

      One thing i did learn... hi tech. i thought that was people like nasa or intel. turns out it was web designers with delusions of relavance!

      Go figure.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Phew

        "I too listen to R4 but unlike you i did catch the programme.

        i spent about ten minutes shouting at the radio as each and every bongism was trotted out."

        Think yourself lucky. I caught it twice.

        1. Naughtyhorse

          Re: Phew - lol

          well the second time you only have yourself to blame!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Phew

      "Buy Shares in Couriers not dot.com bubbles."

      Hey, where do I sign up for shares in Royal Mail?

      1. Fibbles
        Thumb Down

        Re: Phew

        The royal mail is a bad example. They're legally obligated to do the unprofitable bits in the delivery chain for every other courier service in the country.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    "bicycling through miracles"

    Very good.

  8. Irongut

    Meanwhile in the rest of the country...

    IT companies quietly get on with the business of actually making some money.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    <snarf>

    "There’s no better place to gauge the economic viability of a new business sector than from the vantage point of a moving bicycle". Direct hit!

    Must try cycling to work via Old Street, apparently things go zoom that way :-)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Pint

      "Must try cycling to work via Old Street, apparently things go zoom that way"

      Quite, but remember your helmet - they're busy "failing often"

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Well said!

    Quote: "Google. The internet advertising giant - which produces no content, pays minimal taxes to the UK, and relies on using others' content without paying - may yet succeed in having the law changed to decrease its liabilities and supply costs at the expense of British businesses"

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      Re: Well said!

      By that logic, FedEx and UPS also have no product and rely on using others' content without paying.

      Counting every Nth-level sale as the product of the internet is absurd, but not much more absurd than cherry-picking out-of-context attributes to get in another lash at the in-crowd's whipping boy du jour.

  11. Peter 54
    Joke

    It's probably 'unique', or FoI excluded

    "Auntie has a reluctance to address technology bubbles – as demonstrated by this extraordinary Newsnight. When unicorns have been sighted, the Best Bits get Censored.

    Why could that be?"

    Beyond other reasons cited, maybe:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17217042

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/28/bbc.television

    Best Bits Censored - as for the rest, question's are not being asked either. Top it off with watertight oversight and you have the most trusted news monopoly in the world.

    And that's how you REALLY hold the powerful to account. Ask the front runner for the next DG. With her, it's genetic.

  12. Phil Endecott

    Patrick Moore

    Fi Glover once called Patrick Moore an Astrologer.

    She is an idiot who should simply be ignored.

    1. Paul Johnston

      Re: Patrick Moore

      We all sometimes have the wrong word come out.

      Just most of us are not being recorded or played on air.

      1. Naughtyhorse

        We all sometimes have the wrong word come out.

        like the suit at the beeb that put figlover and job in the same sentance, now thats a doozie

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Looking out off the coffee shop window over the so-called 'Silicon Roundabout', I can see Inmarsat, Content and Code (a sharepoint shop), a bland building filled with Amec (an engineering company), cafes, shops and a few pubs.

    Where are all these cool, revolutionary companies supposed too be? Or are they, as I suspect, a couple of guys with a Twitter account peddling vapourware?

  14. John Styles

    More canals than Venice

    Ah, the made up statistic that is never questioned, like the famous 'more canals than Venice' made up by someone in Birmingham's PR dept.

    I personally doubt that Shoreditch is one of the 3 top tech hubs in London.

    1. LinkOfHyrule
      Coat

      yeah but

      Brum's canals have a greater volume of turds in them than Venice's so give them some credit please!

    2. DavCrav

      Re: More canals than Venice

      "like the famous 'more canals than Venice' made up by someone in Birmingham's PR dept."

      I remember reading somewhere that that had nothing to do with Birmingham council, by the way. Although it is also true. Moreover, taken from Wikipedia:

      "Counting water volume and taking into account depth measurements, Birmingham has more cubic meters of water pass through its canals than any other city in the world."

  15. Crisp
    Pint

    I think this is relevant

    http://xkcd.com/1032/

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Re: I think this is relevant

      I hadn't noticed until now that the guy's name is "Connr" ... well-played, XKCD guy, well-played.

  16. Aldous
    Thumb Down

    nathan barleys of media ass kissing the nathan barlays of shoreditch

    its like media and business and social yeah? all together we are like them and they are like us yeah?

  17. StampedChipmunk
    FAIL

    BBC Tech News reporting is lamentable

    ... anyone seen a report by Rory Cellan-Jones? He was in Shoreditch a few weeks ago on radio 4 going on a one day programming course. He built a website. He was then heard reporting quite breathlessly that he was proud that his website contained HTML, CSS and some Java apps. Wow, well done...

    Now, reporting on the rise of programming awareness in non-coding environments is a good story (his course partners were all marketeers trying to understand the workload that goes into building a website) and there's a good tech story there - but Rory, as usual, bypassed it through apparent ignorance about the subject.

    Compare anything by Rory with reports from the Beeb's science correspondent David Shukman, or medical correspondent, Fergus Walsh, or defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt. Since Tomorrow's World died a death, the BBC hasn't bothered with science or tech news at all...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I think they...

      ...dropped Tomorrow's World when it became clear that the future had been indefinitely postponed.

  18. Jonathan Richards 1
    Thumb Up

    re subhead

    <blockquote>Why is Auntie (literally, this time) in bed with Google?</blockquote>

    [emphasis added]

    Fi Glover is your aunt? Congratulations! You wouldn't have her phone number handy, I suppose?

    The obvious answer to your question is because she's doing a web search, and can't be bothered to get up, I should think.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: re subhead

      cos she's married to some Googler or other - further on in the article.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Are they all on massive drugs?

    Seriously, can I have some?

  20. steeplejack

    The trouble with wholeness

    is that you're always approaching it. You never actually get there.

    I think what Fi Glover has touched on is the intangible... Marketing hype is infinite, as it can be made from nothing.

    And Fi, personally I prefer Amazon. And so do 99% of internet shoppers.

  21. Gord

    conspiracies everywhere

    thank you google for keeping consiracy theory journalists earning a paycheque by your mere existance. great for the local economy. and they say google takes all the money back to the US leaving britain penniless. for shame.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Forget the Google nepotism...

    The real news story here is that [apparently –I didn't hear the programme] Radio 4 managed to produce a piece about 'teh internets', without wheeling out Martha Lane Fox, to stick her oar in

  23. Caoilte

    Always the problem with incubators is kicking out the startups which don't succeed.

    To me Old St === insurance. Mind you, plenty of insurance internet startups...

  24. Peter Galbavy
    Devil

    incubators for parasites

    Having lived through the first 'net bubble and watching this one continue to inflate, I can say with some certainty that these incubators and the pseudo nerdgasms in the mainstream media that go with them are simply there to nurture the parasites that feed of the genuine innovators and those who put real work into technology. Along swoops either or both of some hipster luvvy or a JV managed suit with an MBA and there goes the farm. Meh.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I love the UK - the only place where you can have a fig lover visit shore ditch. I mean, really, how does it even happen? Who goes to live in a place called 'shore ditch'?

    I mean, I'll sometimes cast aspersions on the developments and towns called stuff like 'Far Mountain' or 'Longview' or 'pleasant valley'. But hey, what are they going to call it? "Medium Hump"? Who's going to move to "Noview"? And it's going to be hard to attract business to 'Revolting Valley'. But it seems like the UK actually USES those kind of names - and yeah, every place has its edge cases ('Intercourse', 'Sugar Notch', and 'Fishkill' come to mind here) but it seems like English town names range from a bit morose to self-flagellatory.

    Really - Shore ditch? Are there school team mascots like in the US? "Go, go, Shoreditch Ducks!" I don't see it.

    Now, Moody, Alabama - there's a town name. The whole place is filled with small-town-requisite businesses, all dutifully following the townName.businessType formula. I drove through the place and nearly went off the road from laughing - which wouldn't have been good, because I would have needed to go to Moody Collision.

    It's not as bad as having to live there, though. Your son turns emo because he goes to Moody High. Your daughter cries because she got a badly-fit prom dress from the Moody Seamstress.

    Your dog needs to see the vet, but you're too scared to take him to the Moody Animal Clinic. And your teeth go bad - it's probably better than having to go to Moody Dental.

    The worst thing is that every visitor probably makes fun of your town's name. Whenever somebody comes into the Citgo, it's, "Ha ha, I got some Moody gas! Is there another kind?!"

    It'd be enough to piss -anybody- off.

    1. Caoilte

      Shoreditch

      Shoreditch was so named because it was originally the City of London's open sewer.

      Can you feel a bit of the glamour now?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @David W.

      So what does the W stand for, then?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: @David W.

        'Wobblenoggin'. Why do you ask?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: @David W.

        ...and who the hell keeps asking that, anyway? I'm beginning to feel all stalkified, or whatever. It's *stalky*.

    3. John 62

      Cotswolds

      Some fantastic place names in the Cotswolds. Anyone for Lower Slaughter? It's really nice this time of year.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Cotswolds

        There's a place called 'Bushkill' whose sign I used to drive by every once in a while. From 2000 to 2008, it always gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

        Ahem.

  26. BongoBoy

    Not to mention Rory Cellan-Jones deep love affair with all things Apple.

  27. Ascylto
    Big Brother

    23456

    Or like BBC online where we're 'allowed' to comment on the Chelsea Flower Show but not on the unlawful imprisonment, the miscarriage of justice of Sam Hallam.

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