From January 27th onwards, the last Friday of every month, at 10.30am at Fudge, we will getting together to hang out, chat, hear about new stuff and enjoy some nice food.

Who’s this for? Anyone from the digital and technology industry in the city, startups, creatives, designers, developers, geeks, gamers, investors… you name it, if you like techie stuff, and especially the web, you’ll fit right in!

Where is it? Once again, Rosie and the team at Fudge are going to be looking after us and have a wonderful selection of food and drinks for us to enjoy. The Fudge website is here with full details of their location.

You can say you’re coming along on our MeetUp site, but actually there is no real need, just come along if you can. I look forward to seeing you!

A small independently owned restaurant with a passionate team (known to the regulars as Team Fudge!) the restaurant has an addictive personality, a friendly feel and is driven to deliver homemade brassarie style dishes focusing on great flavours, fresh food, no fuss!

That’s not to say the past 6 years have been without struggle for the young team.

Where there’s smoke there’s fire – especially in the restaurant business which is a super tough cookie to crack. Constantly pushing themselves forward, while keeping a very close eye on the financials, the team at Fudge have taken on every opportunity to learn the market, push through a recession, diversify the business to encourage income generating opportunities in order to stay focused, busy, and keep all the staff in full time employment and move in directions that ensure they do not stray from their creative, fresh food and clean crisp ethos that gives them their own little ‘milkshake moments’ as they put it.

In the middle of winning Gold Great Taste Awards for bakery items, their own creamy dreamy fudge, and popular chilli jam, a mention in the Harden’s Restaurant Guide, helping with the round the world Clipper Celebrations, cooking up giant Paella dishes from a warehouse on Hull’s marina not to mention teaching 250 adults to cook from scratch using fresh ingredients in the community – that some described as ‘life changing’ – they also took on a scruffy derelict unit next door to the restaurant on Princes Avenue with a vision of creating extra production work for the team during testing times for the restaurant and to give the Avenues area, and their regulars, the neighbourhood a fine foodie heaven it so desperately wanted!

Shock Snow over winter 2010 was the icing on the cake for the restaurant which took more than 200 cancellations in two weeks – turning the Christmas trade into a panic. And if that wasn’t enough, on the eleventh hour – the night before New Year’s Eve the funding strings were whipped away from them for the bakery plans next door.

Committed to their vision, chefs taking on painting, building duties, managers and waitresses mucking in and a lot of help and support from suppliers, customers, local business owners and consultants the team pushed through and finally secured enough to get the bakery open.

“It’s amazing to see how people genuinely cared for us. They believed in our product. When food prices are soaring the general discounting trend and swapping to poor quality commodities and cutting costs is the usual route in our trade but we held off. People really wanted us to be ok, get the bakery open and do what we do well. One regular mentioned us at mass, another put us in touch with the right people to help with small funding opportunities and others just kept supporting the restaurant by eating lots!”

Behind the scenes the three years of design, product sourcing and menu building can now been seen for all its glory in the Bakery and shop. “The product is just as we wanted it to be. Something to run alongside the restaurant, give the team new skills to learn – something we are proud of. “It’s a huge relief – now we need the support of foodies everywhere and people to spread the word, come and eat in the restaurant and buy a gift in the shop. Or pop in for a Thai chicken and sweet potato pie to take out for your tea and a takeout cappuchino… and just enjoy it as we do!.”

A few weeks in and the place is brimming with the Fudge Personality that the restaurant oozes. Bright clean and crisp, modern bakery homemade treats, whole pies and tarts to order, fresh bread baked on site by the chefs, pies, pastries, jams and dressings & fantastic quirky foodie gifts.

A box in the window is branded FUDGE BAKERY & SHOP…. PROVE YOURSELF… above that a card that shouts out….Jammy Devil! Need we say more….

We’d like to say a huge thanks to Rosie, Emma, all the team for looking after us on many occasion and letting us use their wonderful meeting room. Thanks guys!!

Fudge Restaurant/ Bakery & Shop/ Catering
93 & 95 Princes Avenue Hull HU5 3QP
01482 441019
www.fudgefood.com
Contact Rosie Goodman
07960444940

Known as the Centre for Digital Innovation or C4Di, the building could provide up to 6,700 sq m of space for businesses in the Fruit Market area of the city.

The project is being led by developers Wykeland Group, working with KCOM, Hull City Council, the University of Hull and Hull College.

This is a wonderful project, and one which could provide an amazing workspace and environment for many people and companies.

The partners involved want to get this right and they need your help to do so. If you could take a few minutes to fill in the survey below we would be very grateful.

>>> Click here to take the survey now <<<

(Approximately five minutes of your time).

Every response is put in a draw for £100 of Amazon vouchers. The winning survey response will be picked at random at the end of June 2011 and will be notified by email (make sure you fill on your email address!).

Take the survey!

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Hull has always been different and this is by no means a criticism. We must celebrate diversity and difference, it’s what makes us culturally rich however points of difference should be communicated, debated and argued in democratic society even if concession and compromise result. And it is through this discussion and debate that ideas are formed, circulated and agreed upon. Sounds sensible doesn’t it? but it’s astounding how sense fails to prevail in important strategic decisions that have wide reaching impact on our communities. Something Hull and Humber appear to have over looked.

I have often wondered how many people living and working in the Humber fully understand how many decisions are made on their behalf without consideration for how it may impact them or their families in the future. Huge investment has been pumped into the Humber, specifically Hull, creating giant steel encased castles of commerce which we were firmly told will bring economic prosperity and growth. Some stand empty, their silent corridors echo as birds perch on glass and chrome turrets looking out onto the river.

Some are alive and bustling filled with shoppers selecting goods from outlets mirrored across the country. Some may say that shopping is so easy these days as all centres look the same. Some may say that difference and diversity has been squeezed from our commercial districts as retail is diverted from former shopping streets now left desolate and vacant. Long standing businesses are forced out in favour of ‘regeneration’

And now we have a new pot to spend from: the ‘Economic Growth Fund’ courtesy of Mr. Pickles MP and destined for our struggling northern economies who jostle like children wanting an ice cream from the van panicking that it may run out. Towns and cities have been told to form partnerships after years in dispute and all for what? A smaller piece of an ever-decreasing cake.

The issue here is not that Hull has failed to secure its economic future by isolating itself, nor that Northern Lincolnshire is ‘all right Jack’ after finding a friend in Greater Lincolnshire, but that the Humber has become even more divided.

Parochial infighting and political process had been substituted for an opportunity to create a different approach to economic and social development that may stop the tidal obsession with short-term ‘regeneration’ projects. It is important to remember that the E in LEP stands for Enterprise and what enterprise needs is fertile and supportive environments at all levels of the regeneration process. Throughout the entire LEP proposal the rhetoric was of business and politics: the experts, the think tanks, the policy makers, the politicians BUT what about the local people? Regeneration is not about making communities fit into grand schemes of steel nor is it about edging out natural bedfellows because of historical grudges.

Those that succeed in our brave new big society will be those that do it for themselves and by that I do not mean for free! It will be those that embrace the LEP in whatever form it takes even if they need to raise they’re voice and shout even louder. There’s nothing wrong with being different but cutting your nose off to spite your face could leave you on your own in the playground.

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Personally, I could not agree more with Helen’s post. Historical and political grudges are frankly incredibly small-minded and selfish. It will be interesting to see what Carl Minns, the leader of Hull City Council has to say. You can see what he’s doing on Twitter here.

It’s time for the city to seek unity, strength in numbers and look to the future. Not withdraw, put up yet more barriers and expect to succeed in isolation. Success means hard work, communication, enterprise and innovation. The sooner the people who are ‘in charge’ realise this the better.

So what do you think?

Jon

“HullGamer plans to bring together the gamers of Hull in one place to make up a community, a community dedicated to the cause of gaming!

HullGamer provides the latest gaming news and reviews, competitions, videos and more covering all the major gaming platforms (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, DS, PSP, PC) and will also be holding tournaments at a venue in Hull.

HullGamer was started by Gavin Borthwick back in Feburary 2010 and it has quickly gained momentum within the gaming community of Hull and in fact outside of Hull too, with a focus group planned for the start of 2011 based on Karoo services for gamers and more in the pipeline its worth keeping your eye on us!”

8 speakers confirmed (and yes, I’m still super excited about the lineup, and the fact that they’re coming to Hull!).

One extra speaker to confirm very soon, and I really hope she does.

The venue is just stunning – perfect for the event.

Looking at getting some extra special refreshments sorted out courtesy of a good friend.

Ticket prices finalised with one main aim – value for attendees.

There will be special number of SUPER early bird tickets available, then early bird and full price. (Also student tickets).

Website looking brilliant, and you can get a little preview here.

I’m in debt once again, to the amazing people who have agreed to speak, and to the partners and sponsors.

So, the site and ticket sales should be live early next week, so watch this space.

Best,

Jon

PS If you want a heads up when the Super early bird tickets are available, then sign up here

PPS If you missed last year’s event, then this will give you a little flavour of the day..

HDLive 09 quick thoughts from speakers and attendees from Hull Digital on Vimeo.

Rather than just giving our thoughts, we thought the best idea is to get YOUR thoughts, and so we’ve prepared a very short survey below:

Good news – we recorded the podcast a few days ago, and it is now released! A little better than the 6 week lag of the first episode

So, what do we have for you?

Firstly, we had a new member of the Podcast team join us, Dave Foy from Woof Online. You can follow him @woofonline

We had a great time in the studio talking about a wide variety of topics:

Subscribe in iTunes here!

Have a look at the running order!

- Introductions
- 37signals’ new book, Rework – our impressions
- Adobe CS 5 news
- GTD and productivity
- Omnifocus
- The Four Hour Work Week from Tim Ferriss
- Writing without distraction
- The Pomodoro Technique
- Focus on the essentials
- The LED
- Getting the twitter name you want
- Fave apps
- Xcode
- Mind Your Own Business / First Edge
- Crunch
- Merlin
- TextMate
- 1Password
- Things App
- Dropbox
- Backup options
- Skitch
- TextExpander
- Windows development
- Mamp Pro
- Pragmatic Programmer
- Git and Git Hub

Running time is 1 hour and 20 minutes – please do give us some feedback in the comments!

Subscribe in iTunes here!

For the March MeetUp we’re back at Fudge cafe restaurant, and a big thanks for Rosie and the staff for having us.

For all the details,

>> head over to the MeetUp site <<

and if you haven't joined the 223 other members, it only takes a minute!

Food and drink will be available to buy on the evening.
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So onto our speaker!

I’m delighted that we have the pleasure of the legendary Stephen Lewis
who you can follow on twitter here >> click!

Stephen Lewis, an experienced EE developer, makes the business case for ExpressionEngine, describing why it’s an excellent choice for both web developers and their clients.

ExpressionEngine: Taking Care of Business
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ExpressionEngine is a hugely popular content-management system, used to power an incredible variety of sites; everything from small personal blogs, right up to Barack Obama’s campaign website (http://change.gov/)…, and the BBC’s Top Gear website (http://topgear.com/)….

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PROFILE
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Since founding Experience Internet in 2005, Stephen has been busy building award-winning ExpressionEngine websites, and a reputation as one of the world’s best EE developers.

A member of the ExpressionEngine Professionals Network, Stephen has developed over a dozen popular open source EE add-ons.

In 2009, he was nominated in three separate categories in the Devot:ee Awards (as voted for by his EE peers), and was a runner-up in the Developer of the Year category.

Stephen recently released BucketList, his first commercial ExpressionEngine add-on, which seamlessly integrates ExpressionEngine with Amazon S3.

Stephen tweets as @monooso, and blogs about business and EE (sometimes simultaneously) here.

We’ll have the normal great chat and networking before and after Stephen’s talk.

We look forward to seeing you there

You can follow him on Twitter here >>> click!

(The video captions spell Kai’s surname incorrectly, so a HUGE apology Kai!).

Kai Gates – “It’s not all roses (so you think you’ve got it tough?)” from Hull Digital on Vimeo.