The University of Essex has recently joined forces with Essex County Council for the creation of Parkside Office Village; an exclusively commercial research park located a short distance from the University campus in Colchester. The aim is for businesses to move into the research park in order to work alongside the University’s highly-rated School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering.
Bowater Holographics, an innovative firm designing holographic security systems to prevent fraud, is one such business moving to Parkside. Another is the newly-formed Smart Networked Environments (SmartNE) who have created WAI2Go, an interactive mapping platform designed to help you navigate complex buildings. This technology has led to SmartNE winning a Technology Strategy Board funding competition and is being used by the European Space Research Technology Centre in Amsterdam.
The massive growth in the interest of game development in the area has also sparked The Eastern Enterprises Hub (EEHub) to establish a ‘Games Hub’ at Parkside. This is a 22-week-course which will provide budding game developers with an insight into all the different aspects of the industry. This course is also partly funded by Essex County Council as part of their Economic Growth Strategy Grant.
Not content with merely offering their Games Hub, the EEHub also runs the Essex Creative Entrepreneurs Programme at the Weston Homes Community Stadium. This is in collaboration with Essex County Council’s Essex Innovation Programme and is a 12-session course designed to help entrepreneurs launch, market and monetise their creative enterprise.