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A personal view on Brexit and UK Tech.

Ok, we're entering into a scary week. Here's my personal perspective. It refers to my job, but purely my own view. So my job and my team's role is to try to help make the UK the best in the world in use of digital tech to support learning and research. And you know what? We're getting somewhere.
But we can only do this because we are part of the EU - bluntly the UK isn't big enough to make this happen. Our team and partners come from the EU and US - in any specialised field the UK doesn't have a big enough talent pool and never will. The EU members just wouldn't be here if we didn't have freedom of movement (they'd just go elsewhere if we had points-based work permit rules). The UK doesn't have a big enough IT infrastructure, so most of our cloud servers are based in the EU but outside of UK, because scales of economy only work at an EU level. And it's only possible because we have shared EU legislation.
I've got USA based partners too, but they can't quite play a full role. Why? Because they aren't part of the shared legislative structure that supports our work. Let's be clear, if we Brexit it won't improve the situation with the USA, as there are no plans to work beyond trade agreements.
I'm pretty sure the same applies to pretty much any other high tech area too, and any other area working at the cutting edge on behalf of the U.K.
So scary times.

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