I had the pleasure to meet recently a number of individuals who run various software communities in the North West of England. The gathering was organised under the auspicious of Manchester Digital Development Agency. To my amazement, the North West has number of mature software communities who meets on regular basis. The communities represented included:

• Manchester Digital – was represented by council members Mike Ryan (of Idaho Technology Consultants) and Shaun Fensom (of Poptel). Manchester Digital actively promotes Manchester’s digital business sector, especially to attract business and inward investment from the UK and wider world. It also runs the "big chip awards". In its 9th year, the deadline for 2007 Big Chip awards entries is 12 March 2007. There are 26 awards and 17 entry categories. Shaun Chairs the Manchester Digital whilst Mike is the Secretary. Unlike other groups, this is a formal group with paid membership.
• Geekup – Daniel Morris and Andrew Disley
• Phil Winstanley – runs .net based communities working closely with Microsoft UK
• Paul Robinson – runs BSD and Unix groups.
• NW Ruby User Group – Dave Verwer

As result of the meeting, a Google Group was set-up for better collaboration between all above communities. Special thanks goes to John Keys of MDDA and Phil Winstanley for organising the get together. We are scheduled to meet again later this month.

Tags: MDDA, Manchester Digital Development Agency, Manchester Digital, Big Chip Awards, Idaho Technology Consultants, Geekup, Google Groups

I just got home from attending my first Geekup event in Manchester.

GeekUp is a growing community of web designers, web developers, and other web-minded folk from the North West who meet up in Manchester to discuss the latest industry news, share ideas and spread a little knowledge.

Familiar figures who attended included Anish Kapoor, CEO of Yuuguu in addition to Andrew Disley and Daniel Morris who organise the Geekup events. It was attended by about 20 technology enthusiasts and covered two topics:

• Widgets on Apple Mac by Stuart Frisby of 36 Degrees and Wdgty. I have recently been playing with widgets on this blog, but Stuart’s talk was much focussed on operating system related widgets which require programming knowledge. Unfortunately, this is beyond my capability. If anyone is interested in widgets, I highly recommend getting in touch with the widget master, Ivan Pope, the CEO of Snipperoo.
• Health & Safety guidelines for heavy computer users by Graham Pengelly of Mainline Consultants. Graham spoke about Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSI) in detail. The key message is prevention, which we can all practice by taking 5 minutes rest every hour that we sit in front of our much loved computers. In addition, adapting the right posture will further reduce RSI.

The "talks" took place at Code Computerlove and then we moved to a local bar for further networking. I also walked home (actually drove home) with BBC backstage  T-shirt with tag cloud. Thanks Dan. I certainly look forward to the next event.

Tags: Geekup, Code Computerlove, Snipperoo, Ivan Pope, Andrew Disley, Daniel Morris, Graham Pengelly, Mainline Consultants, 36 Degrees, Wdgty, Yuuguu, Anish Kapoor