Scotland technology on the global playing field

When it comes to technology, Scotland is playing on a global field. This was clear from the high calibre of exhibitors at the Scottish Technology Showcase at the SECC in Glasgow on Tuesday.

With the key theme of global trends and opportunities, the exhibition organised by Scottish Enterprise featured successful businesses that are delivering their technology solutions all over the world.

The Cyber Crime keynote from David Lockwood, Vice President Global Defence and Security at BT Global Services, was of particular interest as we learned cyber crime costs the British economy £27 billion per year. David encouraged the audience to treat cyber crime as a business issue and not a technology issue, and encouraged Scotland to strive toward developing a global cyber solution, saying the country has the advantage of being small enough to meet the speed of the threat.

 It was great to talk with Edinburgh tech start-ups, Free Agent, who like miiCard use Yodlee to power their online accounting software, and my1login who were fielding lots of questions on password security following the 8 million stolen passwords fiasco on LinkedIn and eHarmony last week.

There was a steady flow of traffic to the miiCard stand and it was really encouraging to see growing awareness of the trust issues we're facing online today and the increasing need to prove real identities on the web.

The miiCard cookies were once again extremely popular, and we really enjoyed the cupcakes software testing 2i Testing Services were handing out.

At the end of the day we were left with some fitting inspiration from Graeme Horsfall, Practice Manager at Microsoft, who ended his speech on Global Opportunities through Convergence with the famous quote from computer scientist Alan Kay - "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."