O'ReillyGMT - Tech News from 4 timezones either side of the Greenwich Meridian

Rob Knight - Vendor Relationship Management

I met Rob Knight at the O'Reilly stand at PHP UK. Rob works as Lead Technical Architect at PRWD, a usability and software development agency based in Manchester.

One of Rob's areas of interest is VRM, Vendor Relationship Management, making sure the consumer controls their own data when dealing with the outside web. He was just back from a meeting with the VRM Hub, and was kind enough to tell me more about it. His recent posts on VRM can be found on http://robknight.org.uk:

Ignite UK North Video - Katie Lips

The video of Ignite UK North in Leeds is finally available, and it looks splendido! Thanks to Adrian from True Media Productions for filming it and Imran Ali for editing it. In effect I'm seeing these presentations for the first time, as on the night I was tucked out of line of sight of the screen, somewhat pre-occupied with logistical matters. It's a joy to see them, and to see how good the presenters were.

We're going to feature each of them on here in presenter order. Opening the show, both on the night and on this blog post, is the magnificent Katie Lips from Coffee Buzz, who presented about using the iPhone for business. Take it away, Katie:

Plugg 2009

The Mighty Kris Buytaert writes:

Plugg is on again. The first edition of this European Web 2.0 Conference last year was a blast, it showed some good startups that continue to grow, so Plugg is definitely an event to go to again. Plugg looks at the web from our side of the ocean, the European view ... companies that present there must have a link to Europe.

The new location and the list of speakers looks promising again - with serial entrepreneurs such as Bart Decrem and folks from Dopplr on the schedule, you can expect some interesting discussions about the differences betweeen Europe, Asia and the US.

  Plugg also announced it is ready to accept submissions for their most interresting Startup Rally. 20 startups will be selected to pitch their idea in front of the audience. They will get 2 minutes on the main stage to show what you've got in store, and the audience - together with the jury - will then determine if you're 1 of the 3 startups worthy enough of pitching again in the afternoon for 10 minutes.

The startups can submit their company profile on this mini-site; deadline is Wednesday 4th February at midnight CET.

See you there!

Gordon Guthrie on Erlang

The magnificent Gordon Guthrie, who wrote Erlang - A CEO's View for GMT, was good enough to speak to me at Erlang eXchange about his company Hypernumber's adoption of Erlang. As Gordon says, "Erlang chose us, we didn't choose Erlang."

Gordon Guthrie - Hypernumbers and Erlang from oreillygmt on Vimeo.

Karthik Ramachandra - Erlang eXchange and ThoughtWorks

Video - Karthik Ramachandra is an Extreme Programmer for ThoughtWorks. He is based in Bangalore, India, and was in London recently to speak at Skillsmatter's Erlang eXchange.

He was good enough to talk to me about Erlang, Thoughtworks and the tech scene in India.

And as a slick segue, Pragmatic Programmers have recently released The ThoughtWorks Anthology:

This collection of essays covers a wide range of issues facing software developers today. In this book, you'll find a treasure trove of pragmatic advice to improve the effectiveness of your development efforts. You'll find essays on testing, controlling a project, the creation of domain specific languages, issues of build and deploy, programming languages, techniques for software development, and more!

Francesco Cesarini - Erlang Training and Consulting

Francesco Cesarini is the Founder and CTO of Erlang Training and Consulting, 'your one stop shop for all your Erlang needs'. An exotic mixture of Italian and Swedish, Francesco is currently based in East London at Erlang Training and Consulting's palatial headquarters, but he first came across Erlang while working as an intern at Ericsson’s computer science laboratory as a 15 year old under the watchful eye of Erlang creator Joe Armstrong. Last week (26th/27th June 2008) Francesco was Track Host at Erlang eXchange, a two day conference of lectures, seminars, tutorials and networking, which was run in conjunction with Skillsmatter, the Clerkenwell-based Open Source and Agile Development training company. The two companies are working together to create Erlang seminars and courses throughout the world.

In partnership with Simon Thompson, Francesco is working on an Erlang book called Practical Erlang Programming, to be published by O'Reilly. He talked to O'ReillyGMT on the afternoon of the last day of Erlang eXchange.

Minibar June 2008 - Photos

It was indeed a special Minibar. Channel4 pre-launched '4IP' with the great Matt Locke stepping up to the mic to tell the tale of their new £50 million creative fund. There were some fine presentations all around, with:

Matt Locke - Commissioning Editor C4 Education
Rupert Redington - EC1
Paul Miller - School of Everything
Gi Fernando - techlightenment

A marvellous night was had by all.

www.flickr.com

Click through for more photos of Minibar on the O'ReillyGMT's flickr page.

Paul Johnston of Vida at Mashed

Paul Johnston of vida was an attendee last year at Hack Day, and he was back for more at Mashed this year. He's a tech consultant and CIO of a recruiting start-up from Hertfordshire, and we bonded over the coffee urn.

Thanks for talking to us, Paul:

Christian Alhert on Minibar, Open Business and Social Innovation Camp

Craig Smith says:

I interviewed Christan Alhert at his office in Bethnal Green, London, about Open Business, Minibar and Social Innovation Camp:

StartupCamp sorts Sun Starting Startups. On the Seashore.

Paul Robinson writes:

At risk of becoming a mouth-piece for Sun Microsystems after my write-up of their Startup Essentials launch, I thought that given they're being so generous helping with Manchester BarCamp it might be worth pointing out a BarCamp-style event down in London they're running of interest to startups and geeks of all flavours.

StartupCamp is running over 2 days - March 7th & 8th - at the Cavendish Conference Centre in London. Those of you familiar with the BarCamp format will get the deal. Targeted towards entrepreneurs, business strategists, developers, ISVs and "vendors" (they need to stop using that word) get together and, well, you know, geek out with each other.

Sun's latest acquisition MySQL will be in attendance, as will Salesforce.com and if you want free hardware you have a chance thanks to their bizarre-sounding "Best Startup" competition. It's the week after BarCamp Manchester, so I might just pop along myself.