We frequently have visitors coming in from all corners of the world. When they come to our UK office we like to show them a little slice of England. That often involves a visit to a local pub or two which have a character that, all our visitors say, is unique to UK. We have even taken visitors to watch Rugby Union, we thought about cricket too but most people have not got a spare four days to watch a complete match. Our latest visitor was Andrew Rourke from Maplesoft who came by to see us on his way to a conference in Nice. As it happened we had tickets for an open air concert and picnic at Audley End House so we invited him to join us. Audley End is a magnificent building and a wonderful place to have a picnic and watch a concert with fireworks on a balmy summer evening. Unfortunately it rained, and then it rained a bit more, which was bit sad because we were there for a long time. Andrew bore the conditions with fortitude commenting that it was better than being in his hotel room but towards the end of the evening I am not sure he was feeling quite so positive as it got old as well as damp. Happily the end of the concert saw the rain stop so the we got to see the fireworks while singing Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem and waving our Union Jacks. 
Those of you who have been along to our Maple user meetings have heard about a secret project being worked on at Maplesoft called MapleSim. Inevitably news of MapleSim leaked out and in fact Tom Shelly of Eureka saw an early preview of MapleSim and wrote about it last year. In general though we have tried to keep MapleSim under wraps until it got closer to actually shipping, currently we anticipate its public release will happen in mid-September 2008. At last we can now go public with more details about MapleSim so you can get a little better feel of why we are so excited about this brand new multi-domain modeling and simulation system. What’s even better is that you can try it out for yourself by joing the MapleSim pilot programme, it’s free, all you have to do is register using the online form here and we will get you set up.
If you are involved in modelling and simulation take a look at MapleSim to see why we think it is so cool.
We are avid users of technology at Adept - especially Internet ones, one of the technologies that we use for fun is Facebook. It’s generally not used as much for business communications but more to tell your friends what you are up to and share embarassing photographs. In the spirit of this we have set up a Facebook page for Adept Scientific on which we share some of our less serious moments. Please feel free to add yourself as an Adept Scientific fan (we hope you are) and share any other Adept related information, pictures or news.
Our company trainer, Bob Green, travels all over the country helping customers get the most from their software products. Maintaining a high standard of service for every client is often like trying to cross an obstacle course while balancing a glass of water! There are hurdles to overcome at every turn. Even getting to the venue on time can be a miracle in itself! Flight delays, traffic jams, diversions and ‘leaves on the line’ try even the most calm disposition. Every day really is different.
Even the dress code varies with each visit from the formal suit, to casuals, to full overalls, hat and shoe covers!
The standard of the venue and cooperation of the customer can differ greatly too. Training rooms can be unprepared and completely deserted with less that hour to go before kick-off, or well equipped and ready for action. In some cases, food and refreshments are provided, or occasionally Bob has to fend for himself. And once the training is complete, with any luck, the company will have laid on a taxi to take him back to the airport. Otherwise they simply point him in the right direction of the nearest bus stop!
As you can see, a trainer’s job is one of extremes and it takes an easy-going, ready-for-anything kind of guy to take the unexpected in his stride, yet still deliver a first-rate course. The moral of this story? If you book on-site training, spare a thought for the trainer.
Oh, almost forgot! On his travels, Bob met Elvis! He’s alive and working part-time as taxi driver in Luton!
We will shortly be launching a new product for Adept, the Knovel online library of data. Knovel is an online technical resource used by applied scientists and practicing engineers around the world to quickly locate relevant and reliable technical information. For the last couple of days we have been hosting a partner meeting for Knovel attended by several people from the Adept UK office as well people from all over Europe and as far away as India. We will be putting up background information on Knovel on our website in the next few days but if you’d like to read more now you can go to their US site www.knovel.com. We think it’s a very useful data resource for people using Mathcad or Maple and also our bibliographic tools like EndNote and Reference Manager.
We were recently approached by a journalist at one of the industry magazines to comment on how tough business was for us. That is a hard question to answer because as yet we have not seen any real signs of a slowdown!
People only buy and use the software and hardware that Adept Scientific supply when they need them. We nearly always talk to our customers before they buy to make sure that our systems can do what they want. People who buy from us in industry are usually working in the R & D part of a company and are investing in developing future products which might not be released for several months or years. They are always careful to make sure that they only buy what they need but they also can’t afford to delay research and development if they want to remain competitive in our increasingly global marketplace.
So it’s perhaps not suprising that we are not seeing a slowdown. You never know of course things could change but we hope not for all our sakes. All this talk of recession can easily become a self fulfilling prophesy. The media always find it easier to look at the glass half empty as they perceive it to be more newsworthy. It’s perhaps boring to be quietly doing OK but we like boring.
Adept has been working with Maplesoft (they used to be called Waterloo Maple) for many years and they are a great company to partner with. Maplesoft are based in Waterloo, Ontario which is a couple of hours drive west of Toronto. A lot of the fun of working with Maplesoft happens because we regularly meet with many of their team and because some of their team used to be part of our team. Those with long memories may remember Paul Goossens who was Adepts engineer/mathematician in residence for several years in the eighties. He took his family off to Canada and joined Maplesoft as our first export and, with a brief detour to be VP of Marketing at Opal/RT, he has been there ever since. He is now Product Director at Maplesoft in charge of an exciting new Maplesoft product which will be revealed later on in 2008.
A few years later Paul was followed across the pond by Mohamed Bendame who went to Maplesoft via a stint with Mathsoft before they were bought by PTC. For those who don’t know him Mohamed is an amazing guy, when he first came to the UK he didn’t speak English. He spoke other languages fluently, just not English. With typical quiet determination he got a job, learnt English and embarked on a second degree in Electronics (he already had a degree in Maths!). When he finished his second degree he came to work for Adept and was, among other things, instrumental in developing many of our training courses. 
The story does not end there though, our latest export to Canada is Samir Khan who has been Adepts maths guru for the last six years. Samir joined us after finishing his PhD and has been great person to have on our team, we will miss him and his very quirky sense of humour. We missed Paul and Mohamed of course but we do get to meet up with them regularly and catch up with their growing families. Samir will be moving to Canada in June 2008 to work alongside Mohamed supporting, advising and encouraging the worldwide Maple user community (including Adept of course). Just in case you are worried we’ve already hired new people to take over from Samir and you never know maybe we are training them for a trip to Canada too.
We held a really successful event on 23rd April that went far beyond the standard training session or seminar! We had quality professionals from all kinds of backgrounds come together to pool their expertise and experience of implementing an effective way of assessing and reporting quality.
During case study presentations and informal networking, it was clear that delegates all faced similar quality issues regardless of industry. Those that had overcome obstacles already, shared the lessons they had learnt and the secrets of their success. Our main speaker was Louis Halvorsen, Chief Technical Officer of NorthWest Analytical, there wasn’t a question he couldn’t answer
We orginally planned the event to preview some new Quality tools soon to be released by NorthWest Analytical but it was clear at the event that people also really appreciated being able to share information on how they implement SPC. Several people also congratulated Adept on our great service which was brilliant of course. We all try really hard to support our customers to make the most of their investment in the systems we supply and it is really good when people let us know that we are doing a good job.
We’ve had a busy week with Martin Lord from Quanser who was over for meetings with us with the Mathworks, National Instruments and some of our customers. Quanser make really robust control experiment components. As a graduate of Meccano in my youth, long long ago, and more recently experimenting with Lego Technic I am fascinated by the Quanser products. They are fun gadgets as well as being great learning tools. It’s hard to describe the many different experiments but easy to see how cool these bits of kit are if you take a look at the videos on our site . You can see them in action at http://quanser.adeptscience.co.uk. It’s much more fun to play with them though so if you’re into teaching or learning about control systems come along to one of our Quanser hands on days.
We’ve just taken on a brand-new, exciting range of PC/Ethernet DAQ and control ‘Cube’ devices, developed by United Electronic Industries, and quite unique in their construction.
As far as we know, no other DAQ device is as well suited to extreme testing. The UEILogger is comparatively tiny (4”x4.1”x5.8”) and super-tough! It can fit on the back of a dirt bike, in the cockpit of a Formula One racing car or jet aircraft, or survive strapped to the main turbine shaft in a hydro electric plant and still log hundreds of high-speed signals accurately. Its support for virtually any type of signal, including ARINC-429 Bus or any RS-232 device, and capacity to handle hundreds of I/O make the UEILogger one of the most versatile, universally applicable DAQ system on the market. What’s more, engineers and scientists get all of this at a price that can be thousands of pounds cheaper than competitive units helping project teams keep design costs low.
When you consider this device, smaller than a stack of 10 standard CD cases, effectively replaces rack’s worth of DAQ equipment often occupying whole rooms, it’s a pretty amazing feet of miniaturisation and just goes to show that good things really do come in small packages!
We frequently have visitors coming in from all corners of the world. When they come to our UK office we like to show them a little slice of England. That often involves a visit to a local pub or two which have a character that, all our visitors say, is unique to UK. We have even taken visitors to watch Rugby Union, we thought about cricket too but most people have not got a spare four days to watch a complete match. Our latest visitor was Andrew Rourke from Maplesoft who came by to see us on his way to a conference in Nice. As it happened we had tickets for an open air concert and picnic at Audley End House so we invited him to join us. Audley End is a magnificent building and a wonderful place to have a picnic and watch a concert with fireworks on a balmy summer evening. Unfortunately it rained, and then it rained a bit more, which was bit sad because we were there for a long time. Andrew bore the conditions with fortitude commenting that it was better than being in his hotel room but towards the end of the evening I am not sure he was feeling quite so positive as it got old as well as damp. Happily the end of the concert saw the rain stop so the we got to see the fireworks while singing Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem and waving our Union Jacks. 
