After I moved back to Newcastle in 2018, I worked with Dynamo North East, the North East’s largest tech sector business network, to support its mission to grow the tech economy in the region.
I was a vice chair and one of the directors of the Community Interest Company (CIC), from 2018 until Dynamo joined Sunderland Software City in 2022. This was a great way for me to get to know the local tech community, and to give something back by helping to shape our activities based on my experience in the tech industry and central government.
Dynamo North East has played a central role in strengthening the region’s tech economy by convening businesses, universities and public sector leaders around a shared growth agenda. Through well-attended conferences, sector events and its annual awards ceremony Dynamites, it has created a platform to showcase innovation, attract investment and celebrate success across the North East. A defining feature has been the willingness of senior leaders and practitioners to give their time voluntarily, contributing expertise, and engaging their organisations to support the development of a more connected and ambitious regional tech community.
The Dynamo Advisory Board met monthly, and as chairs we would take it in turns to write a blog post reflecting on the discussions. You can still find my posts on the November 2019 and April 2020 to get a sense of the themes we were exploring.
Dynamo health tech cluster #
One area I led on was the creation of a health tech cluster for the region. Our first event, on automation in health took place in October 2020. In the following 12 months, the emerging cluster held 25 events, with 53 speakers and 807 attendees. You can read sponsor CGI’s Impact Report covering the first year of the health tech cluster.
This work culminated with Sir Jim Mackey, chief executive of Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust, giving the keynote at the Dynamo Conference in 2022. His inspiring talk gave a clear and practical insight into digital, data and technology in the NHS, and helped raise the profile of the health sector as one of the most interesting and rewarding places to work for the local technology community to work.
Dynamo North East joins Sunderland Software City #
As the digital sector developed, there was increasing uncertainty about roles and responsibilities across the ecosystem. This led to an effort to describe the sector more consistently through a joint promotional and positioning statement, “One Region, One Sector, One Statement”, published in 2019.
However, bringing together technology-creating digital firms and wider digital adoption by non-tech businesses made it harder to understand what was being measured or promoted under a single, broad definition of “digital”. Alongside limited clarity on the distinct roles of support organisations, this contributed to a perception of overlap between organisations with different purposes. To support a stronger and more collaborative approach, in April 2022 we announced that Dynamo would join Sunderland Software City, with Dynamo remaining a CIC and staff integrating into Sunderland Software City’s team.
At this point, I stepped down as a director.
