Manoj did an excellent job of arranging sunshine for the NWstartup 2.0 first annual barbecue at the Atlas bar, Deansgate.

The food was magnificent – big fat juicy burgers, sausages, succulent chicken drum sticks, salads and lots of barbecue sauces. Manoj had laid on a bar tab which was a nice surprise as we had previously been told we would need to buy our own drinks.

As ever there were interesting people to talk to about new developments in tech, who’s doing what and where the best new opportunities are going to be. There was some discussion about the new regional venture fund and comments from Mr Mandelson, earlier this week, wishing the treasury to act to approve the £140m North West Regional Venture Fund as soon as possible.

I discussed the use of tech in increased productivity with Katrina from Tiyga as personal productivity is going to be the focus of a lot of activity to manage the recovery from recession. John McKerrell told me about his ‘people in time project’ enabling location based tracking so that friends can share exactly where they were at any given time (could be useful if anyone commits a murder!) and Sean Randles told me about the whole suite of editing facilities in addition to distribution of one minute videos available through web VM.

Gill Hunt
Escata