August 2013 News

Recently, which is to say during the month of July, Shadowcat Systems was happy to compete for a small business award as part of the White Cross Business Awards 2013. This event, which was an initiative run for the business of the White Cross Industrial Estate, saw a moderate sum of money available to share between businesses seeking to grow.

Shadowcat have been undergoing a process of expansion, and we have also started a programme of investment in staff improvement, so it seemd a natural step to compete for an award to help further fund this.

Managing Director, Mark Keating, was responsible for applying, managing and presenting to the award committee and we are happy to announce that we were granted an award which we shall use in the coming quarter.

We, at Castle Shadowcat, would like to extend our grateful thanks to Lancashire Business Development and to White Cross for giving us this opportunity.

Mark Keating receiving the Business Award at the Shadowcat Systems offices on Wednesday, 21st August

It is a pleasure to officially confirm that Shadowcat Systems has joined the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce, taking its place amongst over 400+ other local businesses.

Throughout the whole of 2012 and into 2013 we at Castle Shadowcat have been more active in the local Lancaster district in both business and community and it seemed the next logical step was to join the, local, professional organisations.

We all hope to further grow our local influence to run along with our worldwide reputation as a provider of expert consultancy services and quality software development.

Expect to see a number of Shadowcat staff at a variety of events in the coming months.

Those of you that regularly follow the news from Castle Shadowcat will recall that last year we backed a Kickstarter project relating to translations of the Empty House. The Empty House is a series of short stories relating to Sherlock Holmes and has been produced by MX Publishing to help the efforts of the Undershaw Preservation Trust.

As huge fans of Doyle and Holmes the denizens of Castle Shadowcat were proud to be Platinum sponsors, the rewards were knowing that people in other countries would enjoy the writings (the original goal was four languages), and that more funds would work their way towards the noble goal. As part of our Platinum Sponsor package we would appear at the front of one of the books in a language we chose. We went with Spanish, after a short while we were offered a second language as stretch goals were met and a further language was added to the list of translations, so we chose German.

Save Undershaw Flyer

What happened next surprised us. We were the only Platinum sponsors. The Kickstarter achieved its goal, in fact it surpassed it and six languages (French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Italian and Polish) were selected for translated copies. But only Shadowcat sponsored at the highest level. Our reward was not only to stand proud as a major sponsor (a role we would have gleefully shared) but we were given a frontispiece in every book.

Text in 6 Languages

So the short passage written by our CEO, Mark Keating, now appears in six languages of this magnificent volume, and we at Castle Shadowcat can be cheered by how we helped.

If you would like a copy of either the original English or translated/other language version of the Empty House it would also help this essential project and their long-term goal to save the house for future generations.

Once again Shadowcat's very own Chieft Technical Officer, Matt S. Trout (the ubiquitous mst), will give a keynote address at the Yet Another Perl Conference, Europe, to be held in Kiev from the 12th-15th August.

Matt's talk is due to be given on the Tuesday evening before the Lightning Talks commence on the second day. Once again he will be presenting the State of the Velociraptor, a yearly round-up of the events affecting the community and language of Perl 5.

If you are in Kiev and attending the conference make sure to grab hold of Matt and say hello.