October 2013 News

The delightful Jack Knight of KnightTime Creations has completed the next image in our collection of caricatures of staff and logos. This new drawing is of long time Shadowcat denizen Chrissy (famed as epitaph upon irc).

The brief this time around was to keep within the feel of the steampunk images but to incorporate some elements of Soviet Russia which is a time period in which Chrissy has an intellectual and historical interest. In fact Chrissy is a touch of an expert on Soviet history, technology and military as well as the obvious political elements.

Once again Jack has captured the person, the look, the theme and the feel of our vision and this image reflects that. We citizens of the Castle can't wait for the next one to arrive.

This week, Thursday and Friday, will see Castle Shadowcat deprived of its overlord as our CEO (Managing Director in Imperial Money) is away for a night on an 'experiential'. This event is a part of the Lancashire Forum that he joined in association with Lancashire County Council, Boost Lancashire, Lancaster University Management School.

The Lancashire Forum is targeted at providing aid to companies in the local region seeking to boost growth and work closer with the local authorities and the university. Our participation was recvorded in September when we discussed being part of a broader community. We at Shadowcat are proud to be a part of this programme which is in its initial phase. This will be the first 'cohort' to experience the programme and it is a privilege to be participants.

If you are also attending the event then Mark will be glad to see you there, we will keep you posted of any interesting developments on these news pages.

blog-image data-src=""Lancashire Forum Logos" data-alt="/-images/elements/lancashire-forum/forum.png">

Shadowcat Systems have elected to be Silver Sponsors of the Social Media for Women Conference 2013 to be held in Preston on 26th November, visit the conference on Facebook.

This event is an important landmark in the North West calendar for 2013 and is less about gender (sex in a purely biological sense),* than the potentially provocative title indicates. The conference is not aimed solely at women. It is in fact aiming to address a few important distinctions:

• a greater proportion of women to men use social media
• a high proportion of women have become experts in understanding and teaching about social media
• the conference scene is dominated by men, even in social media events and conferences
• less women attend and present at conferences than are present in the community

So by seeking to create a conference in which attendance is open to all, but, the line up is made up from professionals who are women the organisers are attempting to create some precedents:

• to promote the strengths that many women have in this field
• to give these speakers a representation that we do not currently have, or more accurately is not reflected at other technical events.

Shadowcat Systems are keen supporters of a number of technical, and semi-technical conferences and events. We are also keen community supporters. We recognise that, while not addressing all of the issues around technical conferences this event does at least try to draw attention to, present an open attendance of, and reflect on the current environment. That is a difficult decision and position to take. Our support of this conference is because of our open support of the community and all of its members.

We would also like to recognise the work of Jane's Social Media and DigiEnable in organising this event, and our fellow sponsors Ellison Printing.

• Sex is more scientifically accurate towards a representational goal by a biological definition, whereas gender is more accurate in a sociological context, we have been fairly conversational with both in this piece, for guidance read this article

As many of you who are familiar visitors to these pages will already know we employed, this year, an intern to help us develop our new services and to train fresh blood.

Tom has been a great success in the company and quickly settled into the Shadowcat culture and ethos. It is then a pleasure to report that we have been able to employ Tom as a full time member of the Shadowcat Team.

Tom starts at Castle Shadowcat in early October (Monday, 7th) where he will be placed on animal attendance and dungeon sweeping before working up to dogsbody, that is assuming he can get the dogs body of Bobby the Office Dog.

As the latest meat-space minion on the team staff, clients and visitors will be encouraged to treat him as his serf status allows. So marginally better than we treat the CEO.