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Month: October 2007

BarcampLeeds on 17th November 07

BarcampLeeds is taking place on 17th November 07, thanks to startup evangelists such as Imran Ali. North’s first Barcamp took place in Sheffield, which I could not attend. Manchester has not yet managed to pull off a Barcamp this year, even though it has been on the agenda and has been discussed many times by North West Digital Community. So what is a Barcamp? According to the official Wiki: BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants.…

Mashup Manchester + DEMO on 6th December 2007

As we believe that everyone had a good time on the 18th October, Simon Grice and I with Stewart Townsend (and with thought leadership from Lee Strafford) have decided to fast forward the next Mashup event from Feb 08 to 6th December 2007. We are also making a significant change to the programme. There will be two events back-to-back: Free Demo from 5pm to 6:15pm – free to attend, must be pre-registered Conference from 6:30 pm to 10:00pm – ?25 to attend (?10 for students with valid student union card), must be pre-registered – Catered event We brought the Free…

Mashup Manchester – Collection of blog posts

    We had a great Mashup Manchester inaugural gathering on 18th October at Sun Microsystems, Sale, Manchester. The session was started by none other than David Terrar, who is one of the three people who inspired me to start blogging in mid April 2006. David has become a familiar face at many networking events taking place in London as well as within the enterprise blogsphere. David spoke of BBC, SAP and Pfizer as three case studies, and how they have leveraged web and enterprise 2.0 products to give new life to collaboration both internally with employees and externally with stakeholders…

Ariba – comparison with Oracle and SAP

  According to Justin Fogarty of Ariba: “Ariba Consistently Outperforms ERP Providers in E-Procurement. When it comes to e-procurement, bigger is not necessarily better. According to the results of a new research brief from independent research firm Aberdeen Group, the flexible and focused offerings of Ariba, Inc. the leading spend management solutions provider, deliver greater value than the e-procurement offerings of large ERP providers. In the report, Aberdeen identified Ariba as the leading solution focused on supply management and noted that companies using Ariba?s solutions outperformed customers of SAP and Oracle in key areas required for e-procurement success. “ The report…

BEA has till Sunday to accept Oracle’s $6.7 billion offer

    It seems that Oracle has given an ultimatum to BEA to accept its offer of $6.7 billion for all stock by Sunday evening. BEA seems to be holding on until another bidder emerges with a higher offer. Potential bidders, SAP, IBM and HP have all declined to comment, suggesting that no other bidder is emerging. Oracle threatened to abandon the bid after its offer of $17 per share was rejected by BEA’s Board on Tuesday for the second time in less than two weeks. So who is bluffing whom? Is Oracle really desperate to own BEA given that…

Crain’s Manchester Business launching in December

Today, I had the pleasure to meet Steve Brauner, Editor of soon to be launched, Crain’s Manchester Business, a weekly tabloid aimed at business reader covering Greater Manchester. Steve is a veteran journalist, having previously edited North West Evening Mail, Barrow-in-Furness, Liverpool Daily Post and North West Business Insider. The new tabloid aims to capture a circulation of 15,000 with profitability by year 3.  According to Steve: “The arrival of Crain city publications is the most exciting thing to happen to the UK regional media in my lifetime and I am thrilled to be part of it. Even better, it is…

Would you like Manchester Business School to be renamed after you?

Yes, it’s true, invest £50 million and Manchester Business School (MBS) could be renamed after you. Our new Dean, Professor Michael Luger wants to see a £35 million makeover of the School’s buildings including an up market hotel and conference facility plus new retail space. There is a history of rich individuals buying into business schools, some examples being: University of Cambridge – Judge Institute of Management – Paul Judge – £8 million Oxford Said Business School – Wafic Said – £20 million MBS has 24,000 Alumni of which it is in contact with 16,000 of them. MBS has 240…

OpenCoffee Manchester – 7th Event & Handover to Paul Robinson

Today, we had our 7th event of OpenCoffee Manchester, at which I handed the running of this event series to Paul Robinson of Vagueware. I believe Paul is able to unite the Manchester geekup community and the entrepreneur community, especially given that Paul is both a geek and an entrepreneur. As part of the new leadership, there will be a dedicated site setup to promote OpenCoffee Manchester. I will continue to promote and attend the event. Some of the new attendees we saw today included: Birgit Arkesteijn of phonefromhere Simon Jermy of The Conch, a social network for travel Steve Brauner of…

Fundtech # 1 – Sanjay Dalmia Authors Book on Financial Supply Chain

      Sanjay Dalmia, CEO of CashTech Solutions, a Fundtech company has authored a new book, Financial Supply Chain, published by McGraw Hill. According to the press release, the book defines fundamental Financial Supply Chain concepts and practices and explains how financial institutions and their corporate customers adapt to changing technologies and market demands. The book also offers tangible guidelines for enabling and accelerating delivery of Financial Supply Chain service offerings. Dalmia states, “While the industry is experiencing a growing focus on the Financial Supply Chain, many organizations continue to respond on a tactical basis and implement solutions in a non-integrated…

edocr # 2 – So it started today….

As you probably know we have been developing edocr quietly over the last few months. Today, it was time for us to go public before my presentation at the inaugural Mashup* Manchester. So we issued the following introduction to selected number of bloggers: So this is what some of the bloggers had said so far: Mike Butcher of TechCrunch (first to break the news): edocr joins Scribd, Docstoc in document sharing edocr aims to be YouTube of documents edocr – Crunchbase KillerStartUp.com (as result of review by TechCrunch) Edocr.com – Upload and Share Documents Socially Spendmatters: Web 2.0 Meets Document…