The digital sector continues to thrive in Cornwall, with most businesses on a steady and strong growth trajectory. Staffing continues to be the main barrier to growth. Many companies are needing to hire out of county and event from other countries to get the skills they need, despite trying actively to recruit locally. These are well paid jobs, but there are no applicants locally. This is detailed further in our Digital Jobs Deep Dive report.
One of the biggest updates from the sector is the launch of our Pilot Cornwall Festival of Tech. This was put together quite organically when as a DSP we realised there was a huge wave of tech activites happening in May. Our plan is to treat this as a bit of a trial, with a larger and more planned out festival taking place next year. We’ve already had some very valuable feedback from the sector on how we can make it more inclusive to different types of tech businesses and we know there is more we can do to involve companies from across Cornwall who overlap into the technology space, for example manufacturing. We would welcome any ideas on how we can make this better when we launch a larger more publicised one next year.
In our last DSP board meeting we had updates from across the sector. A key theme was continued investment in and development of digital skills training, including training from Software Cornwall as a part of their Gateway Into Tech program. There is also training from the Digital Peninsula Network and funding has been agreed for the launch more digital bootcamps.
