The Isle of Man Government runs an annual conference to promote the tiny nation as a destination for online businesses.
The Reg FOSS desk, located in the Irish Sea wing of Vulture Towers, often gets invited to conferences and tech-industry events, typically two or even three international flights away from this tiny island. It's unprecedented that the event should be a ten-minute drive away – but Digital Isle 2024 was.
Digital Isle 2024 was the fourth time that the Manx government's Department for Enterprise has run this one-day business conference, with talks and seminars [PDF] aimed at promoting business in this unique nation.
Yes, nation. The Isle of Man is a Crown Dependency, like the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey – separate countries, ruled by Britain's monarch, but not part of the UK. The Isle of Man has its own government, issues its own currency (permanently set at one-to-one with Pound Sterling), has its own national telco, and sets its own laws.
The last is why it could be of interest to internet-based businesses. It's not subject to UK law, and has lower taxes; its base corporate tax rate is 0 percent. The island has been the home base of several companies in the online gambling business, including Microgaming and Pokerstars.
The event is run by a division of the department called Digital Isle of Man, which is especially interested in promoting the island as a base for fintech, clean technology, and data and AI. The Digital Isle event also marks the start of an annual competition, the Innovation Challenge, jointly sponsored with two other government agencies, Finance Isle of Man and Business Isle of Man.
isle of man
The beach at the Laxey fishing village on the east coast of the Isle of Man - click to enlarge
The island – as well as being packed with medieval ruins, rugged cliffs, cute coves, and several nice beaches – is surprisingly well-connected, with multiple undersea cables linking it to the wider internet – most recently, two links to the new Celtix-Connect 2 cable between Dublin and Blackpool. (Appropriately, as the Irish "Dubh Linn" means black pool.) There are currently five datacenters, multiple international power and gas lines – and while there's not a lot of renewable energy yet, it's in active development, with the first offshore wind farm, Mooir Vannin, in planning, as well as an onshore one under discussion.
It's even got its own Linux user group, which this vulture has been encouraging to organize a meetup for some time. Register readers are especially welcome. ®