Archive for 2009
December 25th, 2009
Hello, I’m Gemma, the Business Manager for Mango Studio and I will be your host for this year’s Christmas newsletter (hence the reindeer photo!).
I’ve worked for Mango Studio now for nine months handling the company’s PR, HR, finance and business admin. 2009 has been a very exciting and demanding year. I would like to share our news with you and tell you about some of our plans for 2010.
Mango Open New Offices
Mango Studio opened new offices this year in Bristol. Our new offices are fantastic with excellent transport links not only to the South West but also to the M4 corridor, giving us access to clients in a far wider area. We are also retaining our Middlesbrough studio, where I am based, meaning that our links with the North East remain strong.
It has been a tough year for us, but despite the additional pressure of economic challenges, we are thrilled to have celebrated a number of award wins including Best Digital Technology 2009 and Best Business 2009. Managing Director Vinnie Morgan also scooped the top award in the Straight From Education category at the North East ‘If We Can, You Can’ campaign awards as well as being shortlisted for both GSEA International Entrepreneur 2009 and UK Interactive Entrepreneur 2009.
Winning these awards and receiving recognition for our skills and successes makes all our hard work worthwhile. Read more..
OneDoor Launch
OneDoor recently commissioned Mango Studio to redevelop their online website presence.
Partnering six educational establishments in the Tees Valley area, OneDoor is an education network providing higher-level training, innovation support, business mentoring, careers guidance and financial support through a single point of access.
OneDoor appointed Mango Studio to design and create their online presence in collaboration with a marketing and PR campaign. To see the new site and find out more, please visit www.onedoor.co.uk.
Have a Jolly Christmas
Well it’s that time of year again and I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very merry Christmas and happy new year!
We very much look forward to developing and strengthening our relationships with you in 2010. Here’s to a happy and fun Christmas!
December 10th, 2009
A trio of talant have recently been appointed at Mango Studio during a fantastic stage of expansion and form part of our new South West regional team in Bristol.
Left to Right: David Whelan, Barry Swaisland and Antoine Kougblenou
David Whelan joins us as Non-executive Director where he will be responsible for planning strategic growth within the company. Having worked with many major brand names, David has now become much sought after. He is currently working with a number of companies in a variety of industry sectors. With over 30 years experience in various industries and a portfolio of companies second to none, David brings with him a wealth of knowledge in all aspects of running and developing a successful business and will be a great asset to the company.
Barry Swaisland joins us as from Imperial Business Systems Ltd as our new Senior Developer. With 10 years experience, Barry will be responsible for the day-to-day management of our technical developers in both Bristol and Shanghai, where he will help to keep our projects and staff development firmly on track. When he’s not at work, Barry likes nothing better than reading and ice skating.
Finally is Antoine Kougblenou, our new Technical Developer. As a recent graduate from Teesside University, Antoine brings a breadth of knowledge and enthusiasm. In his new role, Antoine will be responsible for technical development and support help desk. Antoine is a master of drawing, dancing and playing guitar. Some might say he’s a multi-talented man!
MD Vinnie Morgan said: “David, Barry and Antoine have joined us at a really exciting time of our expansion and form the core team at our Bristol Studio. It’s great to have so many talented and experienced individuals working together as we continue to strengthen our position as one of the UK’s leading management and booking system suppliers.”
November 27th, 2009
Unit testing has normally meant loading your application into Firefox and Internet Explorer and ensuring the main functionality still works.
With our booking and events management system written in OO PHP and the fast growth of the company the ability to test each individual section of code in a very detailed level without affecting the delivery dates for our clients in very important. With that in mind PHPUnit gives the opportunity to create and organise unit tests for our websites to ensure that a large amount of testing covering functionality across the application can be run fast and often.
Barry Swaisland, Senior Developer says, “This new process being introduced here at Mango Studio means a more robust system that after every change will ensure the highest quality for our event bookings, voucher sales and back office administration. Both clients and end users can expect to benefit from this change”.
For more information on unit testing in PHP follow these links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_testing
http://www.phpunit.de/
November 9th, 2009
Are we moving from a digital age into an information age?
That is a question I recently asked government representative Ben Bradshaw at the cabinet forum.
Recently I was invited by the British Council to attend the c&binet forum in Hertfordshire, which brought together business leaders from across the creative and finance industries to discuss finance for creative industries, new business models for online content, developing talent and securing creative rights. Here are some of the related topics of debate.
An opening speech from the prime minister set the tone for a prestigious debate on digital Britain. Throughout the event, the panel (including David Rowan, editor of Wired and Neil Berkett, CEO of Virgin Media) discussed the economic climate, having identified that other industries are looking to the creative industry for new business models. But how do they expect creatives to lead the way with certain restrictions (such as the ordnance survey holding back postcode data) preventing the sector from flourishing?
Digital agencies and businesses similar to ourselves at Mango Studio are now being told refocus and concentrate on product investment, distribution, marketing and contacts. However it is the government that needs to listen to us creatives and work at the same speed. They must move fast on issues such as P2P, which is causing everyone problems when distributing journalism, media and music. Despite the music industry being in fantastic shape with colossal demand and supply, they need to educate those responsible through providing a clear solution to current consumer behaviour. [update: 25.11.09 - digital economy bill]
With Mango Studio now embarking on a clear road map for future development of our digital business, it was interesting to see a rather un-diverse panel judge the future of digital Britain. Their tolerance remains impartial to a non-sustainable model and I personally hope they work together, listen to our views and move quickly to allow us creatives to flourish on an international scale. Overall it was a fantastic conference, a great first experience and my thanks go to the British Council. And in answer to my question, “yes, quite possibly”.
Vinnie Morgan, MD.
October 13th, 2009
We are delighted to announce that as of Monday 21st September 2009, Mango Creative Studio Ltd opened new regional offices in the South West of England. The new office which is based in Bristol will give us access not only to the South West but also to the M4 corridor allowing us to provide our valuable services to a greater catchment area. We will also be retaining our Middlesbrough studio which will be our gateway to the North East.
These are exciting times for Mango Studio as we look to continue our development of leisure management and booking software over the coming years. As part of the new offices, we have recruited two new members of staff. More information coming soon.
Our additional contact details are:
Mango Creative Studio Ltd
1st Floor Prudential Buildings
11 - 19 Wine Street
Bristol
BS1 2PH
t. +44 (0)117 370 6316
e. bristol[at]mangostudio.eu
s. http://support.mangostudio.eu
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.
September 8th, 2009
Is anyone else already fed up with all this twitter malarkey? If you do tweet its probably because you’re following suit and you’ll know it is a full time job to monitor everything. Soon we’ll have jobs ads requesting full time social bloggers! Twitter’s popularity stems from simplicity of communication, cool viral with involvement and freebies. Remember how email changed from social enjoyment to a social annoyance? Are we witnessing the same thing in Twitter?
What I concluded from the 262 seconds of video below (apart from it ripping off Did You Know 3.0) was that only 26% of 68% of this video that has a black font is correct. 30% of the content is too fast to read considering that the average reader will read 75% slower than the composer who likely produced this on one of the 42% white apple macs sold this year. Confused? You should be.
There is indeed a revolution taking place but how does using social media perpetuate consumer spending? The concept certainly makes the case for Social Media in business but even so, the numbers in this video are wildly exaggerated (probably because they grow so fast that by the time you read them, they are outdated).
Its true, radical change is imminent because as socialnomics rightly states, many of today’s social networks do not make money. What that change is nobody really knows, we can only assume that Twitter will rule and become the immediate source of news, online video will boom and social shopping will finally emerge next year.
Whatever your opinion, Social Media is exploding all around us. So, have fun, be helpful and be attractive. And if you’re like me, be controversial. Enjoy.
August 19th, 2009
MD Vinnie Morgan was recently nominated as a Challenge Finalist in the region and we discovered last week that he is a proud winner of the Started Straight from Education category from the Northeast’s If We Can You Can campaign - aimed at connecting serial entrepreneurs across the Northeast.
Mango Studio also recently scooped two awards at the Blueprint awards, which may be for smaller companies, but the rewards and recognition have big reputations. The annual celebration of innovative business ideas, which is open to all staff, students, graduates and alumni across the Northeast saw more finalists than ever selected to attend the University’s final, held at Middlesbrough Football Club’s Riverside Stadium. The winning entries were for:
Best Business 2009 Category: Mango Studio
Best Digital Technology 2009 Category: Mango Studio Booking System Platform
Mango Studio are now going to represent the Teesside region at the finals to be held at The Hilton Newcastle where we are hoping to scoop awards that will lead us onto the national finals later this year. We love awards and recognition and are honoured to be part of these fantastic events. They also make good office decorations. Thank you to everyone involved!
August 7th, 2009
IE6 No More is a movement to accelerate the death of Internet Explorer 6. The campaign asks sites to detect IE6 visitors and encourage them to upgrade to other browsers.
Today Mango Studio joined the movement as we discontinue our support for the IE6 browser. The aim is to target both personal users and corporate IT departments who are behind the times. The site creator, David Rusenko said:
“We think we can have a huge impact: For those users that are just unaware they are using an old browser (mothers, grandmothers), we’d like to encourage them to upgrade and have a better experience using our sites. For those users in corporate environments, we’d like to start putting pressure on the IT department to upgrade — the more users who complain about seeing the prompts (especially if coming from the top), the more pressure the IT department will have to either upgrade IE 6 or install Firefox side-by-side with IE 6 for compatibility reasons.”
Did you know.. 69% of corporate users can’t upgrade because they don’t have administration access or they are told they cannot upgrade. [source].
Mango Studio are disappointed that IT departments don’t feel an urgency to upgrade with IE7 having been realeased over 3 years ago. The more complaints the IT department gets (especially from the top), the more pressure they’ll feel to upgrade. Even if they can’t upgrade, they should install a version of Firefox.
June 29th, 2009
Have you started following us on facebook, twitter and flickr yet? If not, we’d like you too. Its a great way of connecting people and businesses, sharing news and ideas. So, keep up to date with the latest at Mango Studio by following the links below!
Follow us on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mango-Studio/76220967675?ref=nf
Follow us on twitter:
http://twitter.com/mangostudio
Follow us on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mangostudio
Mango Studio bi-annual newsletter:
http://www.mangostudio.eu/blog/newsletter.php
Mango Studio’s press releases:
http://www.mangostudio.eu/contact/press.php
June 11th, 2009
Despite the current economic challenges, digital businesses in the Northeast are seizing and capitalising on opportunities. They remain at the pinnacle of technology development and are accelerating major strategic decisions, allowing the Northeast to become a hub for digital entrepreneurs. That sadly is not the view of the media..
Following the criticism of the NorthEast from the telegraph who reported that “the calibre of entrepreneurs in technology nosedives north of the Midlands” (Sun Tech Mission 2009), we feel its our responsibility to stand up and become a small voice for the NorthEast.
The telegraph said of companies from the North pitching at the Tech Mission event, in London, “even the older entrepreneurs appeared remarkably out of their depth in London”. They added that “the conference scene in Newcastle is bleak … the quality of investors is low and … Government-funded schemes are administered by people who know little or nothing about the technology industry”.
In typical UK media fashion, they have focussed on the negatives instead of on what is good and successful in the NorthEast. Hugely successful events and conferences range from Thinking Digital to Inspired6 and now bdailyTV. Having established ourselves in the NorthEast, we have experienced and witnessed perfect indication that entrepreneurial flair is flourishing - these individuals are fearless and importantly, are succeeding.
With Mango Studio relocating in September, we will have our own strong and well research opinion on digital business life across the country stretching the M4 Cardiff to London and the coast Brighton to Newcastle. We are determined to hit back at the recession and continue our expansion despite being in that “should we, shouldn’t we” phase. We are hopeful to continue this growth in the Northeast.
The entire team at Mango Studio are proud and privileged to be part of the exciting and committed developments, passion and entrepreneurial spirit that continues to accelerate at rollercoaster speed within the fantastic Northeast.
