Nobody Knows What They are Doing
Newspapers, television, publishing, magazines are all being fed into the crusher.
We have become used to technology changing things irretrievably, but it is still a shock when the familiar goes into crisis. The Scottish Press is in freefall with newspaper circulations dropping and market share being stolen by better funded papers hailing from furth of Scotland.
But today’s predators are tomorrows prey. Strange US hybrid online publications roam the land.
Never let a crisis go to waste.
There will be new media giants, there will be news on the other side of the catastrophe – and this is our opportunity to make sure some of them are global-reach, English-language and Scottish-based.
Because while the internet allows them to come here, it allows us to go there.
Success to the bold
The Edinburgh Tech Scene faced this dilemma a few years, back. How to compete with behemoths, funded up the ying-yang and based in cities dripping with talent and experience.
Edinburgh now has 2 billion dollar companies – punching far above its weight globally. Skyscanner’s main competitor is Google, and FanDuel’s is Yahoo.
There are hard-won lessons to be learnt: share experience, train and learn as a community, be madly ambitious, get the smallest thing possible going that is profitable and grow that.
Rookie Oven
Fairfield Shipyards, 1048 Govan Road
Glasgow
6 August 2016