imran*

This week saw a bumper crop of tech events across the North…

The MELD launch parties in Leeds and Manchester kick started this intersection of social media and journalism. I went along to the Leeds event and bumped into the former CEO of Leeds Media, Terry Morden and Simon Robertshaw, formerly part of Liverpool’s ICDC and now heading up the Sandbox incubator at the University of Central Lancashire.

The launch itself included talks from Paul Egglestone and David Gmiyah (presenting some strange concepts on the future of web news); many people were confused by the apparently convoluted application process but were generally enthused to get their ideas in front of media organisations.

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Unfortunately, I missed two events across the Pennines in Manchester…

• Celebrating their millionth UK user, LinkedIn held one of it’s three UK events in Manchester, with a chance to meet the company’s UK team as well as other members from the region.
• The inaugural mashup* conference also took place in the city, run by local maven Manoj Ranaweera and regulars Simon Grice and Tony Fish. Coincidentally, Manoj’s new startup, eDocr, got some coverage with TechCrunch this week, joining fellow Mancs YuuGuu in flying the flag internationally for Northern startups. Competition for eDocr is already hotting up with Adobe’s entry into this emerging market, with Share…another ‘YouTube for documents’.

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Next week, Leeds Met and Sheffield Hallam will play host Adobe’s ten-city Campus Tour, promoting Creative Suite 3 with tutorials and workshops. The Leeds-leg, this Monday, already has 300 attendees registered!

I’ll be along for midday and afternoon sessions on cross-media design, ‘extraordinary’ web-design and Photoshop CS3.

Last, and most certainly not least, we’ll be formally announcing the first BarCamp Leeds – registration is open, but the formalities will happen tommorow 🙂