Digital pioneers still shining amid recession

Mar 29 2009 by Dave Harte, Birmingham Post

I wonder what the media will write about when the economic dust settles?

Financial news preoccupies the national and regional press to such a degree at the moment I wonder what will fill the business pages once we realise that stories such as “heavily-regulated bank plays it safe” simply aren’t newsworthy.

So let’s fast-forward a few years to a post-recession Birmingham where we’ve finally gone half a year or so with very modest growth and the financial sector is sulking about not being allowed to stay up late with the better-behaved sectors in our city’s economy.

Although even those better-behaved sectors haven’t fared too well.

What did poor old put-upon manufacturing do to deserve such a rough time in another recession?

It tried to diversify, it innovated, it did everything it was told; but it still shed jobs and it still came out lower in the pecking order of how Birmingham earns its crust.

But wait, there’s one part of the economy that seems to be having a ball.

It went into the recession talked about amongst those in the know as a potential bright star but largely castigated by the media as nothing more than a diversion for those with too much time on their hands.

Yet here we are on the other side seeing a new sector creating jobs and businesses in a shiny new digital economy whilst solving a few of the city’s social problems along the way.

The new media stars of the post-recession world are those individuals and fledgling companies who took time out to look at how their trade – social media, digital media, conversational media, call it what you like – could help connect the city to its citizens... how empowering individuals with digital communication tools meant it was easier to get things done, to hold public servants to account, to save money by streamlining services and making everything generally a lot simpler.

And, most importantly, the digital pioneers knew what they were doing.

In giving their knowledge away for free they were growing the market and creating demand.

They’d spotted that in a downturn the push to transform both public services and public service broadcasting would create a market for which only they had the solutions.

We should be reading more about these people right now in the traditional press but for some reason we don’t.

The story they have to tell is still being written maybe but they are out there, on blogs, in twitter feeds, sharing expertise and giving away knowledge.

When they do start grabbing the headlines we’ll wonder why we didn’t hear about them sooner.

* Dave Harte is economic development manager for Digital Birmingham