Summary:

November 2008 marks the Madison debut and Milwaukee rekindling of “99 Bottles Documentary,” a documentary film that explores the history, culture, and brew making processes of craft brewers in Southeastern Wisconsin. Contributions from the founders and brewmasters of 16 unique Wisconsin breweries and brewpubs along with interviews from local historians culminate in a timely and relevant celebration of Wisconsin’s worst kept secret - Beer! The tour starts with four shows in Milwaukee from November 6-9, 2008 at the Times Cinema in Milwaukee. Tickets are $8, with half of the box-office sales going to help sponsor the Kiwanis Club of Metropolitan Milwaukee Nights’ November 7th “Brew Fest” event.  Next stop is a series of four shows in Madison at The Orpheum Theatre from November 13-16. Attendees that arrive a half-hour before all shows can taste samples of beer from the breweries that are covered in this film.

Detail:

“99 Bottles Documentary” explores the history and culture of the craft brewing industry in Southeastern Wisconsin. A collaboration between Wisconsin-based Mutant Barmonkey Productions, LLC and Haptic Vision, “99 Bottles Documentary” began over a pint at Wolski’s Tavern. Producers Glen Popple and David Oplinger, in partnership with director Jason Williams, set out to explore what it takes to make great beer in their own backyard. Otto Dilba of Ale Asylum in Madison commented, “It was a great excuse to have a beer and reminisce about the origins of Ale Asylum, and was the most legal fun we have had with our pants on.”

Over the course of their travels, one common theme has emerged: ‘free beer’ is not free. With the single-minded purpose of a master chef, the men and women that bring you pint after refreshing pint strive to survive ever-toughening legislation, worldwide resource shortages, and an ever-growing public demand for excellence in their product.

The filmmakers’ quest took them all over the state of Wisconsin, from Mount Horeb’s tiny award-winning brewpub, the Grumpy Troll, to the glimmering halls of the New Glarus Brewing Company’s newest stainless-steel beer mecca. “Mark and I enjoyed being interviewed for this worthwhile project. Coming from a small village in Wisconsin, we are honored to be part of a project that allows us to showcase our award winning beers…”, said Douglas M. Welshinger, The Grumpy Troll Restaurant and Brewery.

In addition to researching the rich pallet of breweries, the filmmakers ambushed average people and beer aficionados alike. From Comet Café’s “Beer School” to the Milwaukee Public Museum’s “Food and Froth” fundraiser, they polled the public inquiring: “What one question would you ask a brewmaster if given the opportunity?”

With centuries-old brewing traditions of European families that settled the Midwest, it seemed only fitting that the trials and successes of their descendants should be explored. The rigors of this emerging market, the time-honored traditions that they uphold and the daily regiment of sweat equity necessary to meet the bottom line make for a fascinating expose of one of Wisconsin’s worst kept secrets: Beer.

AGR Upstream, Asia Pacific

AGR Asia Pacific is an Australian and Asian integrated oil and gas service provider. AGR-AP manage, engineer and service offshore and onshore oil and gas production facilities throughout their life cycle. From exploration and appraisal drilling, through to full field development, production and final abandonment.

AGR specialise in assisting oil companies with low cost, fast track commercialisation of hydrocarbon resources using leading edge technologies and world class processes.

Background

Necessity truly was the mother of invention at AGR Upstream Petroleum, a natural resource exploration firm that last year found itself needing a way to co-ordinate a AU$100 million ship refit involving nearly 40 subcontractors in three countries.

Projects for the company include both onshore and offshore Australian sites, as well as sites in India, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.

In the past, Upstream had managed such projects via e-mail, with new versions of drawings, schematics and other large documents regularly forwarded between team members separated by large distances. This approach, while more or less effective, introduced countless delays and retransmission efforts because of the sheer volume of information being pushed through the e-mails.

“You’re in a situation where you go through one design, have got to make modifications, then have to reissue the drawings and get everybody up to speed,” says IT manager Ivan Prescott. “We’re talking about 30,000 drawings to be sent to 30 or 40 people, and it was silly to try and put this stuff out over the e-mail. We needed to collaborate in a managed way.”

Upstream faced financial motivators as well as practical ones: with the company wearing nearly AU$1 million in lost revenue for each day the ship was away from its normal home in the Bass Strait, it was essential that the risk of delays be eliminated as much as possible.

Having identified a potential problem area early on, Upstream began discussions with long-time web design and web development partner Newpath WEB about ways to address it through the use of technology.

Solution

By embracing custom web and application development rather than off-the-shelf applications, Newpath WEB was able to spec out and build an online document exchange solution that would provide a common repository for Upstream’s documents.

Designed and built with a custom Web interface and MySQL database backend, the new exchange was fast-tracked and completed within just three weeks. “Normally, says Prescott, developing, testing and refining such a significant project would have taken up to three months”.

Hosted from Newpath WEB hosting facilities, the document exchange was put through heavy usage during the course of the project, which ran through the second half of 2006 and involved the regular transmission of many gigabytes of data. Rapid turnaround in the delivery of the system proved incredibly valuable for Upstream.

The company began using the system from the beginning of the six-month refit, and it quickly proved popular with all parties concerned — including no fewer than five subcontractors in Singapore and four more in other countries.

“Newpath WEB were able to provide us with something that would fit in with our public Web site (which was also designed and developed by Newpath WEB),” says Prescott, “and allow a secure login to a backend where all parties concerned could upload and download documents very, very quickly. Documents were available within minutes of being uploaded, rather than sending our very large files via e-mail and having the delays associated with that.”

One of the most valuable parts of Upstream’s new content management system was that it not only enabled upload and download of project documents, but also tied in with the broader scope of work that Newpath WEB was also performing for the company. This included a fully featured Website, with everything from corporate policies and organisation charts to information on procurement, vacant positions, system processes and other corporate information.

Newpath WEB built the entire site around an easy to use editing tool that let employees update the Websites quickly and easily. Building on the site, the company has also developed tools such as an e-mail signature generator, which produces consistent employee e-mail signatures according to a single common style. Another development included a job ad generator, which integrates with Upstream’s career management system to automatically extract and format job-wanted ads as HTML code for publication on third-party employment sites.

Online Marketing, specifically SEO & SEM was also an element that was included in the project, with results producing an increase in traffic by 1500% to the site within the first 3 months.

Result

Having taken the company from a manual and inefficient email based method of collaboration to full online publishing and document sharing in just a short while, AGR is predictably enthused about the results of project and the long-term benefits it will deliver to the company.

“We were able to get the whole thing up and operational without too much hassle, and had full collaboration via our Website,” Ivan says. “It was a job well done, saved us an enormous amount of money and has already paid for itself many, many times.”

Such innovations have helped Upstream greatly improve employee participation in the online conveyance of information. And, given its massive success in saving time and money on the Crystellation refit, the system is now being considered for a broader use within the company, with plans to roll the application in with its own Microsoft SharePoint Server environment, developing it for use by partners and other subsidiaries worldwide.

For further information, please visit:

www.agr-ap.com or www.newpathweb.com

David Young, VP Infrastructure Services of leading SaaS solutions provider Global MainFrame, announced today the company has successfully tested and launched its proprietary Dynamic Provisioning Engine, which now forms the robust back-end of the Energy Resource Manager platform. “We are continuing to set the pace for the Oil and Gas sector,” Young says. “DPE is a fully integrated and secured service, which complements our Microsoft partnership, to enable the efficient delivery of network resources to activate any requested software.”

The Dynamic Provisioning Engine seamlessly performs the work of several engines commercially available today. With intuitive operational and administrative overlays, it deploys new services in the field very quickly. DPE also provides users a requisite policy-based security component and authentication control for selected business management, communication and CRM solutions. Augmenting existing accounting systems, this technology currently allows users to create and modify accounts, add (and delete) multiple users, change user passwords and check user balances.

“It serves as a centralized gateway, and as a result of the automated provisioning processes,” Young continues, “users will realize the activation of any purchased service in a very short amount of time. The system allows us to push content dynamically. At provisioning time, it can log on to any network device and make the necessary changes to activate a service in real-time and allows for the incredibly efficient distribution of our systems, modules and applications online.”

The engine, which utilizes various Microsoft solutions, is extremely flexible and will scale accordingly to accommodate many thousands of new clients and users. “Our development team has done a tremendous job in responding to the needs of our Oil & Gas clients,” Young concludes. “We’ve definitely come along way since cumbersome assembly languages controlled the market. This software paves the way for our exciting new programs coming down the pipe and straight into the hands of users in the field.”

About Global Mainframe: http://www.globalmainframe.com

Global Mainframe, trading on the NASDAQ Bulletin Board, symbol: GMFCF, delivers asset management SaaS modules online. Now a Certified Microsoft Partner, Global MainFrame has been selected one of Microsoft’s 14 exclusive field-managed partners out of 3,000 in Western Canada. Additional modules will cover operational areas such as dispatching, field ticketing, inventory controls, and employee training. Global Mainframe also offers an extensive mapping engine integrated into its base platform to help clients’ visualize and operate their businesses efficiently and effectively.

Calgary – Brian Pike, President of Calgary-based SaaS solutions provider Global Mainframe, announced four new appointments to his management group following the completion of the recent MapFusion acquisition. Joining his elite team are Guy Paterson, David Young, Graeme Boyce and Mark Paterson. Effective immediately, each has been given a Vice President title and will be located at the company’s office in Toronto.

“These guys are uniquely talented and very welcomed additions,” explains Pike. “We know their expertise and experience will help us grow and succeed. Their combined output will enable us to rapidly introduce and commercialize our Energy Resource Manager, which has now been integrated with a fully functional data-driven mapping engine, to our Oil and Gas clients on an exclusive basis, prior to us tackling the Forestry and Mining sectors.”

Guy Paterson, VP GIS Services, previously architected and developed the WAN-based Geographic Information Systems capable of extremely efficient data delivery and location based analysis for MapFusion. He will continue in his expansive role at Global Mainframe to oversee and manage the application development life cycle from initial concept, research and prototype to final product and deliver multiple innovative technology solutions.

David Young, VP Infrastructure Services, formerly Director of Technology at MapFusion, began his career in the automotive sector, where he managed and deployed initial technical web-based ETL, CRM, and Call Centre applications. “This past week David ensured the smooth transition of MapFusion servers,” Pike continues, “and is now responsible for mission critical systems and core services required by our company.”

Graeme Boyce, VP Marketing and Communications, will consistently position Global Mainframe and its assets by unifying the brand components and aligning key messaging across the company. Upon establishing long-range goals, he will then implement strategies, and coordinate action plans to further reinforce and stimulate sector-specific revenue efforts.

Mark Paterson, VP Client Services, co-founded MapFusion and will provide the required leadership, direction and administration to accomplish the company’s strategic objectives. “We are expecting to deliver the quintessence of high quality and flawless services,” concludes Pike. “Mark will ensure we provide our users an exceptional experience.”

About Global Mainframe:

Global Mainframe, a Calgary-based company, trading on the NASDAQ Bulletin Board, symbol: GMFCF, delivers SaaS modules to the Oil and Gas industry over the internet. Forthcoming additional modules will cover operational areas such as dispatching, field ticketing, inventory controls, and employee training. Global Mainframe also offers an extensive mapping engine integrated into its base platform to help clients’ visualize and operate their businesses efficiently and effectively.