#ignite100

Silicon Shore: How Newcastle Quietly Became A Tech Hub

Twenty years ago Newcastle was run down and destitute. Now it’s home to the U.K.’s second most vibrant tech sector behind Silicon Roundabout. And those involved see no reason it can’t be one of Europe’s brightest lights too.

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Photo illustration by Matt Tucker, Three Lions / London Express / Fox Photos / Stu Forster / Getty /…

Meetups, especially tech/ startup-themed ones, are an awesome way to connect with people. We've attended a fair few in our time (before and after we started Chew) and have always enjoyed the excuse of meeting up with old friends and making new ones.

A few weeks ago, during an Ignite session with Paul and Tristan up at Campus North, we floated the idea of hosting our own meetup during one of the accelerator trips to London. Everyone seemed keen on the idea, and we figured as an creative/ entertainment startup it'd make sense to run a meetup for similar startups. A few days of planning ensued and Startup Social Club was born... 

It's been a whirlwind week - so here's a quick recap of what's happened during launch week!

(Ben, Ignite's Paul and Wil 'testing' Chew earlier in the week)

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We launched Monday and have been holding on for dear life ever since! 

We hit a peak of #2 spot on Product Hunt on Tuesday (after Matt from Gecko Labs posted us up - thanks Matt!), which drove an amazing volume of traffic.

We've been pushing new features and bug fixes, including new audio interfaces (with much more to come). As always, give us a shout if you have any feedback or queries. 

Our first Startup Social Club meetup is next Thursday (15/01/15). We confirmed our two speakers this week; Helen Lawrence from Twitter UK and Michael Salmon from NBCUniversal's Media Labs. You can confirm attendance/ read up on the event here.

The streams are starting to roll in - check the current archives on the homepage for an idea of who's doing what. Some really cool content coming in! 

We’re still getting the Chew socials off the ground, please say hi on Twitter or Facebook! 

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Ben ordered a Pioneer DDJSXW controller over the Christmas break so we've been testing streaming our live (and occasionally wonky) mixes from Campus North. You can check them out on the Chew and Discode accounts.

We're hosting an event in Newcastle at the end of January - secret venue, 100 tickets, massive sound system. If you're in the toon, we'd love to see you there...

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We've been mixing disco, house and dubstep this week - but our tune of the week is without a doubt Plastician's Shallow Grave. Madness!

A short and sweet recap of what we’ve been up to over the last week! 

Our first film night at Campus North

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We're down to our final few days at Campus North in the centre of Newcastle before heading back to London for a few weeks of rest hard work.

We've finished with the majority of the Ignite mentoring - so we're heads down on the design and development for launching the all new Chew platform early January. 

We're still cramming the meetings into our (relatively rare) free time and managed to spend time talking to Nick at Cantora, the awesome Lauren and Hannah from BBC Worldwide. 

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Another crazy week with work, another crazy week with play! We spent the week sampling the delights Newcastle's bars offer (while fighting off winter flu/ viruses) before Ben explored Amble's beaches and Wil flew to Lithuania for a gig over the weekend.

We hosted the first film night at Campus North last Thursday night, introducing our Ignite colleagues to the delights of Monty Python's Life of Brian on the big screen. We had an awesome time (and ate far too much popcorn)! 

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It's all about DJ Hazard's Bricks Don't Roll at the moment. However annoying it gets! 

A short recap of what we've been up to over the last two weeks! 

Ignite's London mentor day at Google Campus

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It's been a crazy, crazy two weeks splitting our time here in Newcastle and down in London. Apologies for the radio silence - we are still here! 

Two weeks ago, we were up in Newcastle for the third week of Ignite mentoring. Another great (if challenging) few days pitching the Chew concept to investors, mentors and founders. 

Last week, we made the trip home to London for our first week meeting the London investors and mentors. The London week was as intense as everyone had said it would be - but (now we've recovered) we'd probably do it again. Exhilarating stuff! 

We managed to fit a few(!) meetings into either side of the two weeks' activities - seeing Mat from Sofar Sounds Newcastle, the Leaf FM team, James from Startup Kick Cards, John at Juno, Sarah from Buggle and the guys from SoundCloud and Mixcloud. Oh, and a few others we can't talk about just yet. We've been busy! 

You may have noticed the Chew site's a bit different - more news on that soon. Lots coming your way! 

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It's been a fairly mental fortnight - but we've still found time to discover a few new spots in Newcastle and London. If amazing coffee shops are your thing, but you're a tea drinker, Quilliam Brothers' Teahouse is the place for you. Their hot chocolates are amazing! And if you're at a loose end in Shoreditch, check Lower East Side Deli. Their pulled pork bun is the best! 

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It's been a varied fortnight as far as the music's gone - but Uncle N-Type's been keeping things ticking along nicely! 

A short roundup of what we got up to last week!

Quayside

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We had a great week at Campus North last week - our time on Ignite is really starting to get interesting!  

We spent time with Ignite Alumni - Mark from Blooie, Jo and Kev from Reframed TV and George from Clink. Really great to hear their stories and see where they've got to after 'graduating' Ignite! 

We met some more of the programme mentors and had some great workshops with Blu Sky and Wonderstuff. Oh, and we signed the paperwork for our first seed investment!

Outside Ignite, we've continued making good progress with Chew Live Tracklist. We've also managed to get the new backend - built on Microsoft Azure Media Services - working smoothly. We are now built on the same Internet scale streaming solution that a dozen leading international broadcasters used to seamlessly deliver the 2014 Winter Games and 2014 FIFA World Cup to tens of millions of customers globally!

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We had a great time last week enjoying the (social) tech scene here in Newcastle - with Github and PHP meetups at Campus. We also explored the amazing Lane7 bowling alley (amazing food and atmospheres)!  

Wil had a meeting at the Cycle Hub on Quayside, an amazing little cafe and bike shop. We'll be spending a lot more time there once we have our bikes with us! 

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We had a drum&bass week last week, spending most of it listening to Icicle's new album Entropy - it's out now on Shogun Audio!