Dear all,
It has been a brilliant 18 months of growing and developing Software Cornwall as a community. We have highly successfully piloted and developed models for supporting the growth of our tech cluster for today and for the future.
From education to business Software Cornwall has put Cornwall on the map, raising the visibility of its high growth cluster through Tech Nation and inspiring thousands of school children to consider Computer Science as a highly rewarding and diverse career option. We now have a fully scalable and proven programme of potential activity we can roll out if funding becomes available in the future.
Business Membership has grown to over 70 business which has enabled us to now cover the basic cost of the core network management and member services, thank you!
We are delighted to confirm that Lyssa Fee-Crump is now heading up this role and she can be contacted through the [email protected] email. Lyssa will be managing membership, online channels, communications, recruitment and events. Financial management will be supported by Holly Patten through Mackerel Sky.
Future Activity – We will continue to support additional broader activities where possible, however as these are dependant on in-kind and volunteers which are now becoming limited, it is expected that these will be limited until funding becomes available or membership grows further to enable us to fund the time and resource needed to repeat them. We have successfully developed all the key segments identified in our objectives which gives us a diverse and whole approach to building and developing our sector further.
Team – Given this growth and diversity, Belinda Waldock will continue to be an active voluntary director and committee member supporting the network, but to ensure we can continue our support of all objectives going forward, the committee team will be taking up lead voluntary roles on key areas of our clusters development going forward. Paul Massey will be leading on Finance and Public Sector engagement, Mike Trebilcock on Education & Skills, Toby Parkins on Infrastructure and Networking, Paul Clark on Brand development, and Lyssa Fee Crump on Events and Careers.
Volunteers – Our broader activities like our Mission to Mars school holiday events and other collaborative projects like Tech Nation and the Community Map are still unfunded and so fully reliant on partners, members and volunteers to fund, organise and run these projects, if you are able to help please do contact us.
We are currently working with a number of partners and from public sector/EU programmes about future funding to support and work with Software Cornwall and its members in the future. If you would like to join as a member, volunteer or support Software Cornwall please contact us at [email protected] or visit our website www.softwarecornwall.org
Best wishes
The Software Cornwall Committee Team
Belinda Waldock, Lyssa-Fee Crump, Paul Massey, Mike Trebilcock, Toby Parkins, Paul Clark & Mike Barritt
A personal note from Belinda…
Hi all!
It is a wonderful moment to see Software Cornwall stand on its own two feet and be in a position to fund the basic core network management. Thank you all so much for your support and help making this happen!
As the network and its activities has grown along with the growth of my business Being Agile, and the continued growth of Agile on the Beach, over the past few months I have found it impossible to do it all, as much as I wish I could!
The restructure and expansion of our roles and responsibilities at Software Cornwall, and a focus on core activities we feel is the best way forward for the network, this ensures we protect core activities and ensure they are sustainable through membership, and still enable us to quickly scale and roll out broader activities as and when funding and support is available in the future.
I will still be very much a part of the Software Cornwall team as a director, but I will be less hands on with the core networks operations, and the amount of in-kind I can commit will be limited at least for the next couple of months while I am busy being agile!
While it is disapointing we have not received enough support yet to sustain activities beyond core member services for the year ahead, this still marks an exciting point for the community and I look forward to seeing the amazing work that has been achieved as a community over the past 18 months developed further in the near future. Please do let us know if you can help with organising or running our wider activities so that they can be sustained.
I can be contacted through my email [email protected] if you would like to discuss any of the above changes to Software Cornwall further. If you would like to discuss improving the agility of your business or Agile on the Beach please contact me via [email protected]
Best wishes
Belinda