Sheffield City Region LEP establish Creative and Digital Industries group
The Sheffield City Region Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) has announced the creation of a Creative and Digital Industries (CDI) sector group, to advise on the strategy for economic regeneration through digital technologies.
Lee Strafford, of the LEP board who will oversee this activity, said: “The CDI sector is a huge force in the UK economy and is an area in which the Sheffield City Region excels. The opportunity is to ensure that both the City Region and the UK continue to innovate in order to remain globally competitive.”
Chaired by Mike Holcombe, a professor of computer science at the University of Sheffield, the group will include members selected via an application process over the coming weeks.
There are three projects that will be worked on by the group: delivering a Collaboration Centre Network to drive value in the CDI sector through open innovation and providing a platform for collaborating and sharing; establishing a next generation wholesale data centre infrastructure which will capitalise on the growing importance of Software as a Service (SaaS) and will serve the UK and beyond; and working with local authorities and their delivery partners to explore the automation and transformation of public services and business processes through cost-cutting.
The first step of the Collaboration Centre Network strand sees that launch of the “CollaboJam” event on 13 July 2011 at the Workstation.
Emma Cheshire, a member of the private sector operational team that the CDI will work with, said: “CollaboJam is a call for aspiring and seasoned collaborators to come together and share expertise, successes and future opportunities to evolve a wide-reaching, deeply connected and sustainable network that can realise lasting value across different sectors and markets.
“CollaboJam is a free event and has been very popular - quickly becoming oversubscribed in the short time that it was available for registration. The event is aimed at people interested in using collaboration models and techniques to solve real world commercial and service delivery issues.”