Herb Kim, Chief executive officer, Codeworks
Aug 2 2010 by John Hill, The Journal
EVEN before he first drove across the Tyne Bridge, Herb Kim had heard all about the North East. Working at O2 a decade ago, a Geordie friend would bend his ear about the region and its potential as a digital centre.
He says: “For years he’d been selling me the idea of the North East as a growing area for digital work. I didn’t pay much attention at the time.”
People can drone on about something until they’re blue in the face, but they usually have to show it to someone to make the little light go on. There is no shortage of North Easterners peppered around the world willing to sing its praises, but how do you get sceptics to make the trip?
While Kim hails from America’s east coast, he’s helped more people to discover the region with the Thinking Digital and GameHorizon conferences, key elements of his work as chief executive of digital innovation centre Codeworks. As a result, Kim finds himself ranked 83rd in Media- Guardian’s latest Top 100 power list.
“I don’t feel any more powerful,” he says. “I’m meant to be the 83rd most powerful person in that list, but I felt like the 83rd most powerful person in the room at my daughter’s fifth birthday. I think it’s the fact that what we’re doing here is more recognised and the things we’ve done are considered to be of quality and value.”
Icelandic games developer CCP chose the week of the GameHorizon conference to announce it was establishing a base at Gateshead Quays. This year’s Thinking Digital sold out four months in advance and featured speakers such as Creative Commons chief executive Joi Ito, origami expert Robert Lang and story expert Robert McKee. It’s an eclectic programme Kim describes as “a bit like going back to university in a two-and-a-half-day format.”
He says: “With all the amazing digital stuff and faster broadband these days you’d think the need for person-to-person contact would go down, but we find it’s the opposite.”
While these conferences are a key part of Codeworks’ work, this was not the case when Kim made his way north in 2002 at the behest of his Geordie friend to help set up the organisation, one of five centres of excellence installed by One North East.
He says: “The business has always had a focus on people working on software R&D in the hope it will result in something commercially sexy. The networking side was something we didn’t have great ambitions for.
“However, we got Microsoft to sponsor one event and they said it was the most professional event they had ever been involved in. Suddenly we thought we might be good at this.”
The real push came after Codeworks was challenged by One North East itself in 2005. New director of business and industry David Allison remodeled the agency’s strategy to emphasise life sciences, process industries and energy, a move that appeared to sideline Codeworks.
