When I started in web development a few years ago I had to move to Birmingham and London to find work - the local web industry was pretty much DOA. I’m not sure why that was… possibly companies gravitated towards the fibre in Docklands and the financing in the city, or London’s pool of experienced workers was larger. Anyway, technology on the South Coast tended to be focused on defence contracting.
Today there are certainly more developers out there, but they’re not very visible - a Google search for “PHP Developer Portsmouth” throws up pages of job ads, rather than pages of local PHP developers. Other technology- and location-specific searches return similar results.
In an effort to change this, and to make the local development community a bit more “joined-up”, I’ve been collecting local developers’ blogs. I’m hopeful that in the long-term these blogs will form the core of a local web development community, but at the very least, if we talk to each other, if we’re active online and network around subjects of common interest, it will raise everyone’s profile. I know that Adam Wintle wants to do similar things over at Refresh Portsmouth, so anyone who’s keen on real-world meet-ups should talk to him.
If you’re at all interested in web development on the South Coast, please import this handy OPML file into your RSS reader, and check back for updates occasionally. Alternatively, the HTML list is after the break. If you want to be added to the list, or you know someone who should be on there, please just let me know.
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