~ Board of Directors ~

Birket met his first HP3000 in 1974, 3 years before founding MBFoster Associates Limited as a consulting company. Birket was influential in the early years of several companies Quasar (became Cognos), Cole & Van Sickle (became Protos), and The Type-ahead Engine company (became Telamon). He has been involved with HP User shows since 1981. His company became a reseller for various utility software products. Reselling PC2622 (now Reflection) lead to a need to extract data for spreadsheet. Birket found such a product became a reseller and a member of the design team. In 1989 MBFoster purchased the DataExpress product from IMACS plus the assets and offices, and employees in Seattle. In 1992 MBFoster introduced the ODBCLink driver as part of the DataExpress product, and in 1996 licensed a Special Edition to HP (ODBCLink/SE). Birket is the chair of SIGSoftVend and the owner of M.B. Foster Associates Limited.

My first experience with Hewlett-Packard computers was in 1974 on RTE-II and RTE-III systems used in an aerospace company, designing hardware and software for various products. Over the years I went on to use all the RTE systems, participating as an HP employee and consultant in the design of the most modern members of the product line. During my time at HP, I was a user of various MPE systems and worked closely with my peers to create factory control systems with networks of MPE and RTE machines. I became involved in Interex in 1988, eventually serving on the board of directors of that organization. My current employer manufactures replacements for Data General, DEC, and HP minicomputers, so I occasionally find myself still working with RTE-II systems thirty years later.

   Tony Tibbenham

My IT background goes back to 1982 and covers roles from database design through programming, training and support at sites as diverse as local council offices and power plants. This experience included 10 years as IT Manager covering all sysadmin, programmer and DBA for three HP-UX servers.

In 2006 I was hired as IT Manager for a company that ran an HP 918RX server running MPE because my CV said HP-UX and that was declared 'close enough' to HP MPE.

Since 2006 I have grown to appreciate the stability of MPE on HP hardware. The box had not been looked at for the last 10 years: It just kept running, provided it had power.

My remit was to retire the applications running on this old HP server: It took over 2 years to find and deliver a reliable replacement system. Our MPE server is now doing 'lookup only' enquiries into decades of records but I remain keen to see MPE remain available and provide a European voice on the Open MPE board.