CronxTech roundup: local tech buzz for local tech people

Welcome to another round-up of blog posts from the Croydon tech scene, connecting our community and giving an insight into the breadth of activity in the Silicon Flyover.

Reasons to be cheerful

With the lifting of lockdown on the way (hopefully for good this time) we’re beginning to see signs of recovery here in deep south London. Things that have got us excited include:

• the continued strong performance of the tech sector – detailed in Tech Nation’s report
• renewal in our retail quarter, with Flip Out adventure park coming to Centrale
• London South Bank University’s refurb of Electric House for the launch of their Croydon Campus in September
• South Facing Festival will bring the iconic Crystal Palace Bowl open air venue back into use with a cracking line-up, and the park will host this year’s Wireless Festival too
• Ten Degrees Croydon has finished building the two towers opposite the station and both are now available for renting. The flats are amazingly designed and come with a shared gym, social spaces, even a pet spa!

CronxTech movers and shakers

We love getting to know Croydon’s digital people. Check out these recent profiles:

• The Home Office DDaT team profiled some of their outstanding women in tech as part of International Women’s Day
• Superdrug’s Bhavik Davda has been interviewed by DataIQ, having named him one of the most influential people in data
• Chilliapple shared a day in the life of their account exec Bowo Adejuyigbe and project exec Sandra Simion
• Rotaready posted a 60-second interview with their UX/UI designer Shaun Knopek
• PCSG have profiled three of their number: data analyst Ed Goksal, digital engineer Dr Jennifer Macdonald, and digital transformation director Jon Kerbey
• Testronic video games testers, who have an office in town, introduce their new COO

Best of the blogs

Lockdown may be easing, but working patterns are forever changed. Natterbox offers this advice on the 3 essential components of remote working.

In Going Digital, global engineering giants Mott MacDonald write about their digital business and career opportunities all over the world, including their Croydon headquarters.

Congratulations to ClearCommunityWeb on the first birthday of their very successful weekly Digital Awareness classes, which had a total of 442 attendances. ClearCommunityWeb’s weekly classes are continuously helping older people to develop their digital skills, feel safer online and have fun!

In a compelling piece called Slicker Cities, PCSG argues that rebooting cities with smart technology is an urgent task for policymakers as we come out of the pandemic. They also have this on the case for digital twins.

Rotaready have great ideas on Easter promotions the hospitality sector can try to increase online orders during lockdown.

“Stop doing what you’re bad at” and listen to this podcast episode from Dotdigital. Or check out the goldmine of fresh email marketing tips on their blog. Here’s just a few – 5 tips for creating tempting sign-up forms, 5 email campaigns that generate stronger leads, and top 5 content trends for 2021 (Who doesn’t love a listicle of five things?!)

If you like that, then you’ll also love what voucher code gurus Uniqodo have to say about how you can enhance your ecommerce promotion strategy.

“How often should I write blogs?” ask SME Needs (although surely they mean blog posts?). The answer seems to be quite often, as it’s one of a slew of tips they’ve posted in March including 7 tips on why and how to deliver consistent marketing, 4 free ways to market your business online, and how to avoid the feast and famine trap.

According to data recovery specialists DRS, ransomware attacks surged by 150% last year. Yikes. Specifically, Acer has been targeted by REvil Ransomware. Could that or other malware be why your laptop is so slow?

Salesforce-based telephony solution providers Natterbox have pro tips on the top 5 contact centre KPIs you should be tracking, the power of voice data, whether to use voice transcription or speech analytics and top 5 headaches solved by integrated telephony.

New to the roundup, Uboss have started blogging with this post about their cloud telephony platform.

Looking to grow your web traffic? Vaccoda Design has these tips on the best digital marketing strategies while DigitalVirtue explains how to measure and improve your website’s performance.

Bare PR provides guidance on how to excel in a media interview when you’ve only got 5 mins to prep.

My T, the awesome finance app for microbusinesses, have posted about how Artificial Intelligence can help with invoice processing and 5 signs it’s time you used an AI accounting app (like theirs, natch).

Lastly but not leastly, congrats to Rise Media on 10 years of producing awesome videos, which they’ve marked by getting themselves a natty new logo in a team-up with fellow CronxTech folks Fifty Fathoms.

Calling all CronxTech bloggers!

If you’re one of the Croydon-based digerati and we’ve missed your content in our round-up, let us know so we can add you to our checklist for next time.

Don’t have a blog? Yeah you do – use Croydon Digital as your blog, via the contribute page.