Cloud Computing Event on 15th April in Manchester

A quick e-mail before Easter to let you know that Tim Barker (Senior Director EMEA - Product Marketing) of Salesforce.com will be joining the discussions on 15th April at our Cloud Computing event. FYI: Tim has founded and sold his startup, Koral in 2006 to Salesforce.com which was the centre piece in the sales cloud at CloudForce event held on Tuesday in London.

If you plan to attend but have not bought a ticket yet, please consider paying through paypal today as I need to finalise numbers for placing the order for catering. As usual, there will be plenty of beer to keep the conversation flowing. Please tune to http://www.nwstartup20.co.uk/apr09 for event details. Please note only 20 tickets remain.

Lisa Layzell of ThinSpace will be taking the StartUp4Slaugher session. Make sure you visit her website to understand her high growth thin client business.

In 2006, I pitched my failed startup, ebdex to bunch of MBA students at London Business School (VCIC competition). I met Ivan Farneti of Doughty Hanson then, and happy to finally welcome Ivan to Northern StartUp 2.0. We both starved at that competition, and I am happy to say, we in the North, do look after our guests!

I have established a great relationship with Amazon Web Services and have welcomed Jeff Barr, their Chief Evangelist to Manchester twice including showing him the great Daresbury Innovation Centre and running a surgery for startups based there. This time, their European Evangelist Simone Brunozzi will be flying from Italy to be with us and talk about the great Amazon cloud edocr.com and other startups use.

Let's welcome our latest strategic partner, Microsoft BizSpark to the North. Did you know that Bindi Karia was from Manchester before she emigrated to Canada? Does she qualify as a Mancunian? I recently asked opinions on Twitter about the requirements for becoming a Manunian. I was told flatly that I had no chance of ever becoming a Mancunian. Bindi and Northern StartUp 2.0 have great plans for you, which would be announced at the event.

Northern StartUp 2.0 evangelist Roy Shelton will take part, fully disguised this time. He shared his passion for startups before as an entrepreneur (Next2Friends) and Dragon (Drop Jaw Ventures). This time, he will open the debate with "all this cloud computing is fun, but what about that last mile". Yes, folks! He will be talking about fibre, not anywhere, but bringing fibre to your home and office through sewer lines. Did you know that I designed and issued tender documents for a new SCADA system for Abu Dhabi sewerage network within 3 months of taking on the job?

And don't forget the audience, we have some cracking startups to investors, deal makers and service providers. Especially do welcome, Andy Duxbury, CEO of Aaron & Partners, a marketer running a legal firm. Make sure you impress him as he and I have great plans for you. We will also be making an announcement on number of other changes including our plans to offer you a dedicated heavily discounted accountancy and audit services from Horwath Clark Whitehill.

On behalf of the Northern StartUp 2.0 team, we look forward to meeting you there. Please do let others know.

Have a happy Easter break!

Best regards
Manoj

(Phil - business development + Tim - marketing + Fiona - public relations)