Listen to the noises coming out of the local companies, and it’s clear that they feel good about this. Former Facebook executive Joanna Shields, now working for the government’s Tech City organization, said it would help turn a “vibrant community” into a “global leader in tech innovation”. And the head of Google Campus, the internet giant’s local bridge-building effort, said it would “help to establish London as a global center for tech entrepreneurs”.

London’s time, you’d assume, is now.

But here’s the message I took away from it all: it’s time to step things up.

Promised unfulfilled

Britain’s government has been one of the biggest cheerleaders of London’s nascent startup scene over the last few years. While the Old Street area has been a center for the country’s digital economy ever since the birth of interactive media, the decision to create an official “Tech City” movement has seen a concerted effort to court technology companies.

This is for a few reasons. It’s partly an attempt to find some light in the economic gloom. It’s partly an attempt by Prime Minister David Cameron to appear connected, forward-thinking and switched on (look at his relationship with Google to understand the positioning here). And it’s partly an attempt to turn the legacy of the Olympics into something more by enticing big tech firms to the area — even if they don’t contribute much in the way of tax revenue to the British economy.

But Cameron’s commitment to bolstering the startup economy is actually even deeper than that.

Right now, I think the British government — or at least it’s gov.uk team, which is rebuilding government services to be “digital by default” — is actually the most exciting startup in the country.

It’s dealing with big problems in a smart way, tackling and operating in a lean, mean, aggressive manner: a world-leading approach that Tim O’Reilly recently said set the standard for governments. And to do that, it’s hired some of the most impressive coding, design and strategic talent around. Over the last couple of years a sequence of great talent — mainly from London, many of them friends of mine — have been sucked into the gov.uk machine as they try to reinvent the way Britons connect to their public services.

Don’t get me wrong: tackling big problems is great, and the work that Government Digital Service is doing is extremely important. But I think it’s an indictment of the local scene that so many great people are choosing to work for the civil service, and that the apparently thriving scene around Old Street seems to be more and more reliant on government boosters.

So how do you fix that?

The challenge to Britain’s startup community

A few months ago, I wrote that London’s tech community was looking at “golden moment”: a confluence of circumstances that could see the region really push on and make good on its promise.

Now, however, I’m less optimistic. There are lots of great companies and strong ideas floating around the UK startup scene, but right now there are too many poseurs and very few world beaters. The latent potential is not being achieved, and the signal is being crowded out by all the noise of bearded startup hipsters tapping away aimlessly in local coffee shops.

Still, I believe this is a glass-half-full situation. Those who are really taking the bit between their teeth and developing serious businesses are doing very well. Moshi Monsters has turned into a massive children’s brand; online loans company Wonga is doing things that banks can’t; innovative smaller outfits like BERG and Makie and others are making waves in their industries.

But the scene needs an injection of real talent and ambition — in part from the same people who have been subsumed into the government’s digital efforts. While they get down to Important Public Service stuff, the hangers-on have fallen into a self-congratulatory funk, drunk on applause from boosters and ego massages from investors looking to pump up their own interests.

Fortunately, most some of the talented individuals working on gov.uk are contractors, not staff. When their time is up, they’ll be back out. Let’s hope they do something great when they’re free again.

In the meantime, listen up, Silicon Roundabout: don’t buy into the mirage of success. It’s time to stop combing your mustaches and build something important.

Update: Mike Bracken, who heads the GDS project, has been in touch to say “most of our people are civil servants, as we’ve removed loads of contractors as per government policy”.

Glass of wine photo courtesy of Flickr user Davide Restivo

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The docks, once crawling with shipbuilders constructing huge constructing vessels like The Titanic, are now an empty sprawl of wasteland dotted with lonely office buildings. And for anyone who remembers the Troubles, an activity as simple as crossing the road or staying at a hotel can carry chilling reminder of brutality that is not easily forgotten.

It’s no surprise that these difficulties have had an impact on the local startup scene too.

From what I heard, the attempt to build a new entrepreneurial culture is there, but it’s slow going. Northern Ireland’s turbulent existence means that the economy remains massively reliant on the British government (around a third of the population work for the public sector) and it is still working hard to attract investment from outside. Meanwhile, locals are still looking for a real champion, a real victory, beyond bluster and good ole boy networks.

Belfast’s problem is that things don’t get consigned to history: in fact, history stubbornly raises its head at every opportunity, bleeding mercilessly into the present and the future. Northern Ireland’s ambitions are too often scuttled like The Titanic, crushed by the pressure of the past.

But the truth is, Belfast is not alone in this. It may feel like an extreme example, but the whole of Europe suffers the same malaise in some shape or form.

Weighed down by the past

From Finland to Faliraki, from Portugal to St Petersburg, Europe is sitting on a vast and varied history that it struggles to move beyond. We’re stuck like flies in amber, our ideas freeze-framed at the moment our societies were at their most successful or most extreme. Britain can’t shake off the arrogance of empire, France clings to its l’exception culturelle,

In a way, this is especially resonant in technology companies — because, after all, they the ones meant to be inventing the future. And because our societies are failing to shake off the worst parts of their legacy and craft a successful vision of where we’re going, we are all left copying Silicon Valley’s idea of what tomorrow will look like.

Look at Nokia — not long ago the world’s biggest force in the world’s fastest growing technology industry, now apparently an also-ran. Although some of its leaders have a bright vision, too many insiders stubbornly cling to a history of greatness that no longer chimes with the rest of us.

Or look at Germany’s attempts to enforce rigid and steadfast privacy rules. These ideas have a totally understandable historical context, but outside of that unique bubble, it would be polite to call them overzealous. Clinging to that history has left German web companies hamstrung while the buccaneering robber barons of the Wild West clean up everywhere else.

The result is that the conversation about our future has become a one-sided dictation from a group of companies who essentially grew out of the same Valley culture. Our tomorrow is their tomorrow.

I was reminded of this failed future when London’s Tech City announced that it had poached top Facebook executive Joanna Shields to run the organization.

Bringing in Shields, an American, is definitely a win for the group paid to cheer on London as a startup and technology capital: she’s got more experience at the top of 21st century web companies than almost anyone else, which gives her a stratospheric level of credibility with the investors that Tech City is desperate to court. She’s smart, savvy and sharp: a great hire.

Shields’ record is not as spotless as Downing Street would have everyone believe — for example, masterminding the $650 million sale of Bebo to AOL was a genius move for company insiders but disastrous for everyone else. And then there’s the little fact that she has presided over companies that avoid millions of pounds of taxes from the country she now represents. But there is a rightful sense of pride at being able to prize somebody away from Mark Zuckerberg’s clutches.

However, bringing her in is also an admission that Britain — and Europe — has no other visions of the future to offer. It’s a tacit acceptance that technology, that innovation, can only be built the way they see it in Palo Alto.

Follow your own path

Perhaps you don’t mind. That’s fine. But I think if we want to find some alternatives — or at least explore them — we need to move on from our history, and our obsession with creating “the next Silicon Valley”.

Earlier this year I gave a talk in Portugal aimed at helping people there understand that they cannot win by chasing the Bay Area’s dreams. Every startup hub across the continent talks endlessly about being “the new Silicon Valley”, every PR flack has pitched the and every journalist (including me) has worked on those stories. But that’s just playing somebody else’s game. You can’t be the next Silicon Valley by doing what Silicon Valley does. It will win every time, because the game is stacked in its favor.

The same thing happens elsewhere. I talked about the reporting I did a couple of years ago from Shenzhen, China, where most of the world’s electronics are now built. Those skills, that expertise, are all in one place — and in just 30 years. Now their advantage is so huge, why would you try to beat them?

The problem with “the next Silicon Valley”, I argued, was that we took it too literally. Focus on “the next”: What will the next huge technology-led industry be? What will the next center of innovation that touches everyone be? What will change the world? Find that, get there early, build now around a vision of the future that you really believe in, and reinvention could work. Use the strengths you have locally — things like engineering talent, design culture, customer service, research expertise — but don’t let them dominate you. Don’t let history weigh you down.

Now, I don’t know what that thing is — biotech, next generation manufacturing and data are all contenders that Europe could focus on. But whatever “the next” ends up being, every entrepreneur across the continent, whether they’re in Belfast or Berlin — must stop looking over their shoulder, shrug off the past and stop buying into somebody else’s dream of tomorrow.

Photograph of Bobbie Johnson and Belfast mural used under Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr users Luca Sartoni and Infomatique respectively.

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Shields will start in her new job in January 2013. She replaces Eric van der Kleij in the chief executive’s office. He had resigned in June 2012. Shields is an accomplished technology executive who in the past decade has worked for Google, Bebo and AOL, before signing up with Facebook. Her appointment is being lauded by The Kernel Mag, one of TCIO’s self described “fierce critics.” They write,” With Shields’s appointment, TCIO has effortlessly inherited something it previously lacked: credibility.”

There is no doubt she has the wealth of experience and a rolodex that makes are ideal fit for the job. Wired called her the most influential person in European technology. That said, even though she in amazing sales person, Shields has her work cut out in making London an epicenter of technology in Europe.

As our European writer Bobbie Johnson has pointed out in the past, the Tech City hype has been ahead of reality. Having traveled in rest of the Europe, I would say right now if you are a startup founder, Amsterdam, Helsinki and Berlin are three cities that come way ahead of London as European startup hubs. There is access to better broadband networks, better mobile networks, rents, both commercial and residential, are moderate and their is good access to engineering and other talent. Yes, there is less venture capital, but where they are startups, money will follow. Plus, these other cities are friendlier compared to London. We had a choice to do our Structure Europe conference in any city in Europe. Instead of London we picked Amsterdam, which is equally well connected, has a friendlier environment and one doesn’t have to deal with Heathrow Airport.

One of the biggest problems I have with all these cities wanting to become the next Silicon Valley is that they actually ignore their own actual inner strengths and core competencies. New York, today, is succeeding because it is focused on industries that are its core strength — media, commerce, fashion and finance — and coming up with interesting ideas (and thus interesting startups) for the Internet age.

United Kingdom has to think of its technology and innovation base as more than London and TCIO. There is Cambridge, UK, home of ARM. And there is legendary inventor James Dyson, who is trying to jump start innovation in well designed physical products that are inclusive of technology and connectivity around us. It is important for UK to think about technology from the lens of their own strengths and not be some random definition that stops at web and mobile apps.

But having known Shields for a while, all I can say, she really is an ideal pick for the job.

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Not only does it feature some famous faces (Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Niklas Zennstrom, Chad Hurley and many more) but it also actually made me chuckle.

Basic premise: a panel of kids is hiring for CodeClub. And guess who turns up to the interview…

I could have done without Prince Andrew’s appearance (here’s why) but still.

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