Starting at 7pm with a Glühwein reception, our dinner includes Hühnerleberpastete mit Zwiebelmarmelade (chicken liver pate with onion marmalade), Champignoncremesuppe mit Mandeln (mushroom crème soup with almonds), Gebratene Weihnachtsgans mit Apfelrotkraut, Badischen Klössen und Schwäbischen Spätzle (Christmas goose with apple red cabbage, potatoe dumplings and spaetzle) and Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (blackforest gauteau), Stollen and Pfeffernüssen (biscuits).

For those that are not so much into the birds, we also offer roast loin of pork stuffed with prunes as an alternative. Please state your preference when booking.

As the Mansion House caters specifically for the Stammtisch group on the evening, you need to pay by latest 5 December – cost per person £20 – simply call the Mansion House on 0191 281 0836.

Stammtisch organiser Manuela Wendler said: “We are so happy that a renowned chef like Terry Laybourne is putting on such a brilliant menu, which is typical for the Munich Oktoberfest. Even more exciting is that he has joined up with a fellow Franconian, Petra Wetzel, who runs a highly successful brewery and bar/restaurant in Glasgowand will introduce her beers to the region.”

The Stammtisch regulars – who come from many different countries and walks of life – meet every six to eight weeks to socialize in a North East venue that serves German food.

Manuela added: “We are currently planning a networking event with a German airline, our annual Christmas dinner and business events such as country briefings and factory visits to local German owned businesses.”

An estimated 8,000 German nationals reside in the area, working in local businesses, the education and health sector. Major German companies in the North East include Siemens, ThyssenKrupp, Liebherr, Heraeus, Deutsche Bahn, Draeger, ContiTech Beattie, Freudenberg, T-Mobile, Lidl, Aldi and Makro.

The Oktoberfest at The Broad Chare launches on Sunday, 9 October with a ‘Meet the Brewer’ event and lasts until Saturday, 15 October. For the complete menu and further information, visit www.thebroadchare.co.uk.

To join the Stammtisch on 11 October or for events relating to Germany, please email info@lexica-communications.com.

Other autumn/winter events are currently in planning and we’ll announce dates/venues in the next couple of weeks.

21 June: Wine Tasting Evening at the Mansion House, start at 6.30pm at cost of £15 for both food and wine samples

7 July: Beer & BBQ – we’re joined by Glaswegian WEST Brewery, who will introduce their award winning beers that are brewed according to the German purity law.

For further information, email info@lexica-communications.com.

Other forthcoming events will be about travel, a book fair, historic Roman links and the automobile.

On 11 May, the Call Centre Innovations Tour will come to London, with Glaziers Hall as the venue for this industry event. Well-known speakers from the UK will join the partners, including Call Centre Helper’s editor Jonty Pearce, BT’s Dr Nicola Millard and Richard Abdy of the NHS Business Authority.

ITyX’s Andreas Klug will offer his vision of Customer Care 2.0 and use of multiple channels such as email, internet, mail and social media.

For further information and to register, visit the CCIT ’11 Website.

The next events scheduled in the region are on:

• Monday, 21 March at the Mansion House in Jesmond. Talk by David Faulkner, the leader of Newcastle City Council, about the Ruhr Capital of Culture from 6.30pm onwards. Followed by  German Linseneintopf mit Bockwurst at £7.95 per person.
• Tuesday, 10 May with a visit to the Liebherr factory in Sunderland followed by Schnitzel & Bier Dinner in TJ Doyles.
• Tuesday, 21 June – an evening all about German Wine at the Mansion House.

To register or to join the free mailing list, email info@lexica-communications.com.

One of the leading experts in the analysis of all types of text based communication (email, internet, whitemail, fax, documents, SMS), ITyX has now integrated the processing of tweets in its Enterprise Response Solution Mediatrix.

The sheer scale of today’s online communication makes it difficult for brand owners and customer service centres to separate the ‘wheat from the chaff’. An intelligent and self-learning solution, Mediatrix continuously gains knowledge and tracks the responses of both the service centre and customer. This technology allows organisations to now take full advantage of important new communication channels such as social media and engage directly and pro-actively with particular target audiences.

Mediatrix receives for example Twitter-API tweets about an organisation, its brands,  products or services. It then analyses and categorises the content text and routes the message at the best time to available customer service staff. Twitter customers then receive within seconds a contact from the brand owner, using defined response suggestions.

The responses are logged in a user history. Andreas Klug, director at ITyX, explains: “The tweet connects the real time character of an online chat with the commodity of an email”.

ITyX has just demonstrated their product portfolio, which also include email response management, self service, a digital mailroom, web chat and co-browsing at the UK’s leading event – Call Centre and Customer Management Expo in Birmingham.

www.ityx.co.uk

On the agenda of our first Business Stammtisch are for example:

• Recruitment of German speaking staff
• Travel
• One of Germany’s metropole regions
• Trade figures between the UK and Germany

We are also looking for input from the attendees to find out more what they’re trying to get out coming to the Business Stammtisch. For further information, please email info@lexica-communications.com or call us on 0191 230 8037.

One year later, we have now a much bigger group of ‘regulars’ that come to our networking events, generally held either at the Hilton in Gateshead or the Mansion House in Newcastle. The Stammtisch meets every six to eight weeks and the local venues also offer German food and drink, which seems to be a key motivation of all our guests to come along.

The next Stammtisch on Monday, 26 July 2010 will be a summer BBQ at the Mansion House in Jesmond. The cost is £15 per head and will include typical food such as sausages (Bratwurst), burgers (Bulletten) and kebabs.

Lexica Communications will also soon launch a Business Stammtisch for those interested in doing business with Germany. For further information, contact info@lexica-communications.com.

If you want to improve your future career prospects and gain new skills and knowledge, join a free design & engineering taster workshop organised by the Marine Design Centre and Teesside University.

In one day aspiring design engineers will find out more about two key industry requirements such as 3D CAD Design and Reverse Engineering with 3D Laser Scanning.

Venue:  Teesside University – Teesside Manufacturing Centre
Date/Time:  Friday, 4 June 2010 from 9am to 5pm
Cost:  FREE

Agenda

09.00 Registration & Tour of Teesside University’s School of Science & Engineering
09.30 First Workshop delivered by SolidSolutions – 3D CAD Design (Introduction to SolidWorks, which is used by 1.3m people in 140,000 companies in various industry sectors worldwide. Sketch/feature based, SolidWorks provides a straightforward approach of 3D modelling for 2D users, featuring tools that enable the use of direct modelling techniques).
12.30 Lunch break (access to university canteen)
13.30 Second Workshop delivered by Teesside University – Reverse Engineering with 3D Laser Scanning (Introduction to Non-Contact Optical Laser Scanning; Scan data processing, point cloud data handling, filtration, analysis and polygon editing;3D data handling)
16.30 Question & Answers
17.00 Close

To register for this free workshop, simply contact Catherine Frost at Teesside University by email c.frost@tees.ac.uk or call her on 01642 342 481.

For more details on the part-time Foundation Degree in Marine & Energy Design Engineering click here.