After more than two decades of building technology for schools, universities and workplaces around the world, Webanywhere is starting another chapter – with a new home in Ilkley, West Yorkshire.
We’ve moved into new offices at IDC Ilkley, Valley Road, Ilkley, LS29 8AL.
For me, this is more than simply changing our address. It represents where I believe Webanywhere needs to go next.
Bringing people back together
Like many technology businesses, the way we work changed considerably after the pandemic. Remote working gave us flexibility and proved that talented teams could deliver great work from almost anywhere.
But something else became increasingly clear.
Technology makes it incredibly easy to communicate. It doesn’t necessarily make it easy to collaborate.
Some of the best ideas at Webanywhere over the last 23 years haven’t emerged from scheduled video calls. They’ve come from conversations between colleagues, somebody looking over another person’s shoulder, a customer problem being discussed across a desk, or a spontaneous idea that turns into a product.
That’s difficult to recreate entirely online.
Our new Ilkley office therefore becomes the centre of our hybrid working model, with our team coming together in person, while retaining the flexibility of working remotely.
Why Ilkley?
Ilkley feels like a natural home for Webanywhere.
We’re a Yorkshire business with increasingly international ambitions. Today we work with customers and colleagues across the UK, United States and Poland, but Yorkshire remains an important part of our identity.
IDC gives us a modern base within walking distance of Ilkley railway station, surrounded by one of the best towns in Yorkshire.
It also gives us something particularly important: somewhere customers, partners and friends of Webanywhere can visit us.
Building the next Webanywhere
The timing matters too.
Artificial intelligence is creating perhaps the biggest change I’ve witnessed since starting Webanywhere in 2003.
Education is changing. Workplace learning is changing. Software development is changing. And the expectations people have of technology are changing extraordinarily quickly.
We’re investing heavily in that future.
Alongside School Jotter, which continues to help schools improve their websites and digital communications, we’re developing Learner Journey, our new platform bringing together learning, AI, events, communities, bookings, jobs and professional development.
We want the Ilkley office to become somewhere those ideas can develop.
A place where developers sit alongside salespeople.
Where customers can come for workshops.
Where educators can explore AI.
Where we can demonstrate new products.
And, most importantly, where people can learn from each other.
An office should earn its existence
I’ve never believed that people should commute simply to sit at a desk wearing headphones and conduct the same Teams meetings they could have done from home.
If we’re asking people to come together, there needs to be a reason.
The purpose of the office isn’t attendance.
It’s collaboration, creativity and learning.
That’s why we’ll be using IDC for team sessions, product development, customer workshops, CPD, AI training and events – not simply as somewhere to put laptops.
Back to our roots, looking forward
There’s something fitting about making this move now.
Webanywhere started in Yorkshire in 2003 with a fairly simple idea: that the internet could transform the way people learn.
Twenty-three years later, the technology has changed beyond recognition.
That underlying belief hasn’t.
If anything, with AI, it feels more relevant than ever.
So our new office isn’t really about bricks, desks or meeting rooms.
It’s about creating a place where the next chapter of Webanywhere can be built.
If you’re a customer, partner, school, college, university, employer – or simply interested in what we’re building – we’d love you to come and visit us in Ilkley.
