Will a local Knaresborough lad, officially left GSPK Design at the end of February 2012. Having worked on the manufacture of Apollo Creative’s products for the last 18 months Will wanted to pursue a lifelong ambition to follow a career in the armed forces as a tank commander, and joined the Royal Dragoon Guards, a big difference from manufacturing bubble tubes.

Will started at GSPK Design straight out of school as an assembly operator, working on assembling GSPK Designs subcontract clients PCB’s and final assemblies, he then moved on to looking after the production of Apollo’s range of products. All at GSPK Design wish Will all the very best with his future career and will miss his smilling face.

Will's smilling face - works meal out.

Yorkshire is bursting with science and technology entrepreneurs who are busy creating ideas that will change the world. Venturefest is a packed one day event that showcases and supports these entrepreneurs and promises to be a very exciting day.

GSPK Design , specialists in electronic design and new product development will be attending the day on Feb 8th, to network and meet up with friends, partners and clients from the science and technology sector. The day will be enjoyed discussing new product development and innovative ideas on getting products to market quicker, but their main attraction on the day will be to support North Yorkshires’ Young Enterprise Company Programme.

This year as part of the Young Enterprise offering, 6 teams participating in the flagship Company Program will be cutting their teeth in the business world, with a fantastic opportunity of being able to present their products at trade stands during the day at Venturefest with the opportunities to network and gain valuable insight into the business world from a host of successful entrepreneurs.

Paul Marsh MD of GSPK Design and Vice Chair of the North Yorkshire Board of Young Enterprise will be presenting the Award for Best Company on the day. Judging will be carried out throughout the morning by delegates visiting Venturefest with the Award presentation at 13:30

Paul Marsh comments “The company programme provided by Young Enterprise is a fantastic opportunity for the students taking part to learn through doing, actually creating, marketing and selling their own product or services. The skills they develop along the way; confidence, teamwork, business acumen and self awareness to name a few, they will take through the rest of their lives. Without the help and support from volunteers within the business sector this would not be possible, so we thank you.”

Venturefest will open it’s doors on Feb 8th at 8:30 at the York Race course registration and entrance is free.

With the introduction of an industrial designer it has now helped reduce product development times through 3D modelling and visualisation helping get products to market quicker. Minimising design iterations and reducing the risk of potential errors on tolerances, but most of all giving the end client a better visual representation of what they are going to get, ensuring GSPK Design continue to exceed their clients expectations.

Already leaders in electronic hardware, firmware design and manufacture for instrumentation and control applications, GSPK Design can now boast a full service, in-house product design and manufacturing consultancy; encompassing bespoke hardware, firmware, software and manufacture of electronics for instrumentation and control applications. With the new addition to the team, now the aesthetics and conceptual design around bespoke housing / enclosure development is covered.

Tim Chamberlin a third year product design degree student has joined GSPK Design on a years placement and is already making his mark through adding value to the service delivery process.

Over the last 10 years GSPK Designs expertise has been in supplying reliable robust electronic instrumentation and control solutions, and now in addition, it can not only supply bespoke electronics, but can also work with their clients to offer bespoke housing design and outsourced manufacture of bespoke enclosures used in their projects.

“With the progressive shift to rapid prototyping and lower cost tooling options, going bespoke on housings design doesn’t necessary need restrictive budgets.” Quotes Jim Needham, technical manager.

GSPK Designs MD Paul Marsh commented “In the past we have not really offered this skill as part of our service, but as and when required we have used external suppliers, unfortunately this adds to the lead-times on development which is fundamentally contrary to what GSPK Design is all about; quick-turn development and manufacture of electronic products.”

“With Tim on board we can work more efficiently, Tim acting as a liaison with our existing partners bridging the gap in the development cycle reducing those initial iterations of design, hence saving our clients valuable pounds and more importantly time. Communications are a little easier with likeminded engineers talking engineer to engineer”

For further information on how GSPK Design can help you with your next development project see http://www.gspkdesign.ltd.uk

A band of business aces have teamed up with the North Yorkshire region’s branch of Young Enterprise to offer the right advice and support via a volunteer board of experts.

Young Enterprise is the UK’s largest business and enterprise education charity and helps 250,000 young people every year to learn about business.

Young people across North Yorkshire will be able to benefit from the scheme.

The remit of the board is to help raise the profile, awareness and funds to support the Young Enterprise Company Programme.

Joining the Yorkshire board are Paul Marsh, managing director of Knaresborough-based GSPK Design and vice-chairman of the volunteer board, Tracy Smith, managing director of the York Science Park, Rick Armstrong, managing director of the Mentor Group, and Martin Miles of York-based business consultants Glue Together.

Young Enterprise’s North Yorkshire area manager, Jill Tinsley, said: “There are very exciting times ahead and it’s great to have such enthusiastic, committed board members as ambassadors for the region and to help raise awareness of the charity. The more schools that take up the programme, the more pupils can enjoy the benefits.”

She added: “Having volunteer mentors demonstrates how much the business community is behind the company programme.

“Local companies are putting their money where their mouths are to help support a worthwhile charity.”

Paul Marsh said: “Young Enterprise is not about giving young people work experience, it’s far greater than that.

“It’s about giving them the skills they need to generate their own opportunities and create some form of sustainability for their future.”

For futher articles relating to this story see link.

Because the “Control” system is PC driven, GSPK Design believes the system to be extremely flexible, with unlimited end applications, and potentially ideal for home automation, assisted living or lifestyle monitoring or simply energy monitoring.

The hardware is now available and proven, ideally suited to web-software development engineers, who potentially have an end application and access to the market place. Based on the Jennic radio network the system provides a similar alternative to the ZigBee protocol, with the advantage of potentially unlimited nodes, the network has integrated set-up intelligence, facilitating easy installation, as well as tree routing and self healing which means that you will always have conection.

“Every appliance can now be monitored, for power usage and controlled from a central PC, and be potentiallially accessed from anywhere via the web. ”

For further information contact Paul Marsh with subject header “mains control”

The teams, which have been taking part in the competition to set up and run a business since September last year, have all presented to a panel of highly experienced judges, undergone rigorous interviews and set up trade stalls to their companies.
The prestigious awards ceremony was held at the Pavilion’s of Harrogate on Tuesday, May 10th.
This year’s teams include Pearl from King James School in Knaresborough, which makes bespoke glass and bead jewellery; tourism business Magentaprize from South Craven School in Keighley; Chains from St Aidan’s C of E School Harrogate, which also makes jewellery, and; Cutting Edge from St Peter’s School in York, which produced a Chair Yoga DVD, “Get Fit Whilst You Sit” for use with the elderly and people suffering with mobility problems.

Paul Marsh, Managing Director, was MC of the Ceremony, Chair of Judges and presented an award which was supported by GSPK Design Ltd .

GSPK Design supported the award for Most Innovative Product/Service. Presenting the award Paul said……..”Innovation is all about change and improvement, and this year all the teams showed this in great abundance. It gave us great pleasure to present the award for Innovation, GSPK Design pride ourselves in constantly looking to improve and innovate and we felt it important to indentify and recognise this within the competition.”

As Chair of the Judging panel and also as MC of the event Paul went on the say……”The competition is really hotting up and the finals are going to be difficult to judge. This year there are some extremely passionate and committed young people, with business skills and acumen that would rival a lot of their seniors. Good luck to them all.”

Jill Tinsley, Development Manager for Young Enterprise North Yorkshire said, “ GSPK Design Ltd have given Young Enterprise tremendous support over the years. Paul Marsh in particular has been a great advocate for Young Enterprise and I’m really pleased that he was able to lead the judges and be able to hand over an award to such an enterprising company as Cutting Edge.”
The overall winners Cutting Edge will now go on to compete in the Yorkshire and Humber final on June 15th at Merchant Adventurers in York, and the winner of that will represent Yorkshire and Humber in the Young Enterprise national finals on 11th – 13th July.

I’m sure like me you’ll wish him all the best with his new role and he’s looking forward to forging long term relationships with all our customers.