Archive for July, 2008
July 31st, 2008 by Dominic Hodgson
Just a quick update to say that Stephanie has been awesome and given us a 10% off coupon code for going solo Leeds, just signup with the code northhub.
I’ve also been asked to pass along the message that “WE NEED YOUR HELP”
Going Solo is looking for an enthusiastic salesperson to negotiate and finalise sponsorship deals. After a very successful first event in Lausanne, Switzerland, the conference is taking place again in Leeds, UK, on September 12th. There are plans to produce the event elsewhere in Europe and in the US.
Availability: as soon as possible
Remuneration: 20% commission on cash sponsorships
Profile: skilled in negotiating and closing sponsorship deals, knowledge of the tech/freelancing world a plus.
What we provide:
- leads (past sponsors and fresh contacts)
- sponsorship materials
What we expect:
- discuss and amend existing sponsorship offerings
- follow through to closure on provided leads
- other leads can also be explored freely.
If you’re interested or would like more information, get in touch with Stephanie Booth (steph@going-solo.net, @stephtara, or steph-booth on skype).
Have Fun Guys..
July 25th, 2008 by Dominic Hodgson
Going Solo, a one day conference about freelancing and running a small business is coming to Leeds. It’s where every bloody thing in Leeds seems to happen, Old Broadcasting House .
here’s the run down:
8:00 Registration | coffee, tea, orange juice and some croissants
9:00 Stephanie Booth: Introduction
9:30 Laura Fitton: You Only Get What You Give (Marketing and taking care of one’s social capital)
10:15 Break
10:50 Dennis Howlett: The Joys of Tax and Finance
11:20 Panel moderated by Suw Charman: Setting Rates and Negotiating with
Clients (Martin Roell, Stowe Boyd, Dennis Howlett)
12:30 Lunch
14:30 Suw Charman: When Passion Becomes Profession (Balancing Work and Life)
15:20 Martin Roell: Self-Organisation for Effectiveness: Tools and Methods to Get Things Done
16:00 Break
16:30 Panel moderated by Stephanie Booth: Solo in a Networked World (Laura
Fitton, Linda Broughton, Stephanie Troeth)
17:20 Stowe Boyd: From The Far Side To The Dark Side: A Crash Course In
Business Realities For Soloists
18:00 end of Going Solo Conference
Prices : Currently having an early bird special with tickets just £150, then they go up to £220 or, if you’re really, really late £300.. sign up at expectnation
July 25th, 2008 by Dominic Hodgson
Anything Northy is a Drupal installation that the Drupal Users Group have to play with - we can do anything we like with it, try out applications, new ways of connecting, re-purposing, sharing data (to this end, all content will be under one of the creative commons licenses - we still have to decide on this - but basically open and free) or anything else we come across or think of. The idea is we go through the developments in the meetings and hopefully all learn a thing or two in the process. This has already worked well in one meeting where we looked at themes; the response was positive - people like the idea.
At the moment it has some reasturant reviews, a very PINK theme and some big ideas, a list of wifi spots in the north (one of the hubs we were planning to implement none the less!), Keep your eye on this site ladies and gents, those Drupal guys are a determined bunch and hopefully I’ll be able to get to one of the meetups next month.
July 23rd, 2008 by Dominic Hodgson
Following the Saturday of Barcamp Leeds 2, there will be a 2nd Open Street Map Party at 10:30am (so keep the barcamp drinking light..).
There are only 50 places and quite a few have gone so far so you’d better get there quick ( http://openstreetmapleeds.eventwax.com/2nd-leeds-openstreetmap-mapping-party/)
If you’re wondering what OpenStreetMap is, OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world made by people like you.
OpenStreetMap allows you to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth.
A lot was mapped at the last map party and I’ve heard that it was a pretty good laugh (and there was breakfast included?), any questions email tim@geothings.net
July 23rd, 2008 by Dominic Hodgson
Manchester based developer Phil Thompson has launched his “super secret web app”, Cart45, set to “do for ecommerce what WordPress did for blogging.”, The store (which costs £200 £50 at the moment, special offer!!) has a decent set of features out of the box
- Plain text URL’s (e.g. www.mycart.com/category-name/my-great-product)
- Automatic page Title Generation relevant to page, category and product
- Meta tag generation and control of the description field
- Automatic Google Sitemap Generation (and updating)
- Integration with Google Analytics
- Preview of your website’s appearance in Google results to help with optimisation
- Page creation
- News Feeds
- Tagging System
- Product Reviews
- Digital Download Support
- API to create your own additions
There is a demo available and the default theme looks pretty sweet (although the intro text states that its easy to change if you don’t like it, hopefully it will be better than a default OScommerce template).
Requirements : PHP5+, MySQL 5+ and good ol` Apache (with I assume modrewrite enabled).
July 21st, 2008 by Dominic Hodgson
VC hot shot and Blogger Fred Wilson is coming to Leeds to talk on his experience in the last 20 years, He has a cracking history;
Beginning with Euclid Partners, through the cofounding of Flatiron Partners and latterly Union Square Ventures, Fred’s been responsible for identifying, growing and exiting some of the industry’s most exciting startups, including Bug Labs, del.icio.us, Etsy, FeedBurner, outside.in, Tumblr, Twitter, Wesabe - some of which have been acquired by Google and Yahoo with others seeking to reinvent areas as diverse as personal finance, blogging and real-time communication.
You can register here, the event is at (where else?) Old Broadcasting House and is on the 8th of August.
(I am on the lookout for talks like this in other areas, If you know of any please feel free to let us know dom@northhub.co.uk)
July 18th, 2008 by Dominic Hodgson
November 8th and 9th will see tens? of people decend to the rooms of the Manchster Confrence Center, for 
Linux 2008 (this time its personal portable!).
A call for papers has been issued and you can submit them by following the insructions of the link above, they are also looking for sponsors and exhibitors for the event, it would be a good chance for local companies who use Linux in any part of there operation to “show there wares” or if you’ve nothing to show, give something back and organise a big piss up.
If your heading down to LugRadioLive this weekend have fun, after this event LugRadio will be no more.
July 18th, 2008 by Dominic Hodgson
Following the 2nd Manchester Geek Girl Dinner, Leeds is getting its very own, August the 13th (that’s the week before Barcamp Leeds), while there’s nothing to book just yet this is just a heads up for your diary.
The location of the event is The Living Room in Leeds.
Standard GGD rules apply :
- If you are male and wish to attend the event then you will need to be invited by a female attending the event.
- Girls, one date only please! (We want to keep the numbers balanced!)
I wrote a blog post about the Geek Girl Dinners a while ago which should be fun to discuss when I turn up at my first next week.
July 17th, 2008 by Dominic Hodgson
PhotoCamp Leeds will be the UK’s Europe’s first ‘unconference‘ dedicated to photography and imagemaking. Based on the principles of BarCamp; an event where the people that attend create the programme of sessions themselves. These events are open, participatory, democratic, 
‘workshop’ events; the organisers and sponsors simply provide a venue, facilities, beverages and food! The attendees provide the content - and the buzz
Sounds good doesn’t it, the bad news is that I missed the tickets, they “sold out” within about 5 day’s, the event will be held at the same place as its sister event Barcamp Leeds 2 Old Broadcasting House and will be on the 6th of September 2008.
July 17th, 2008 by Dominic Hodgson
Chester Based Mac Fanatics Shiny Development, have produced an app for your Apple (try saying that 10 times fast). Speakapedia that puts boring old text based wikipedia articles into audio files, spoken by a chap called Alex (apparently he comes with every Mac).
All the crap is filtered out and you can even choose which bits of the article you want Alex to chat about.
The app requires a decent amount of hard drive space ( 3.8 MB ) but that’s just Mac bloat isn’t it 
Version 1.0 is priced at $9.99 until the end of August then the price goes up to $14.95.
One feature in development is reading lists, these give you the ability to save “collections” of sections from various entries across Wikipedia in a list and export that to iTunes as a single track, Dave Verwer explains
so if you were going on holiday you San Francisco you might export some of the sections from the San Francisco article, then a section on Alcatraz and something about Napa Valley
(I just nodded at this point as the furthest I’ve travelled in the past couple of years is that, there, London)
You can get a 14 day Trial or pay for the full thing @ http://shinydevelopment.com/speakapedia or if your lucky enough to have some good ideas or a sense of humour we’ve managed to snag two copies of Speakapedia for your enjoyment, to be in with a chance to win just leave a comment with a feature suggestion, the best two will receive a copy of Speakapedia and a Mac Book Pro (Mac Book Pro Not Included).
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