Living in Scotland - Neil Fitzgerald September The first weekend of September saw the biggest annual multi-cultural party in the world finally roll out of Edinburgh, trailing the usual superlatives behind it. Well over a million tickets were sold to the mass of visitors from all five continents in the exhilarating melee called "the Festival" which actually comprises four overlapping ones- the prestigious International, the Fringe, the Film and the Book festivals - each boasting the full range of attractions, from the globally familiar to the intriguingly esoteric.

Neil Fitzgerald

Follow that, I mused, as I do at this time every year while walking through the Old Town's streets past the now-deserted temporary venues.

It's easy to think that the Festival is the only thing going on n Scotland during the summer , but one glance at the listings, from dance music festivals in Glasgow to drama in Perth shows it isn't. And that, once it's over, Scotland hunkers down to a hum-drum autumn slog with only Christmas and Hogmanay to look forward to. Again, far from it.

Fall Flurry
Scotland's high-energy clubbing scene this month strides back indoors from its Ibiza forays and going large in the parks and countryside, not only to its familiar haunts but some radical new ventures (techno-based Digital and progressive house The Edge fusing into Rotation at Edinburgh's The Venue, Slam taking charge at Glasgow's Alaska).

At the other end of the music spectrum, Scottish Opera has brought Das Rheingold, opening its ambitious bid to stage the whole Ring Cycle over the next four years, to Glasgow with the same huge acclaim it got when it was unveiled at the Edinburgh International Festival, while Scotland's major orchestras have started rolling out their autumn programmes from the Borders to Inverness. In between, September in Scotland has already meant everything from Mel C, Bob Dylan and Lou Reed, to the Islay Jazz Festival (including Stacy Kent and Otis Grand).

Major fine arts events this month include, in Edinburgh, the only UK showing of a Paul Klee exhibition, the tour of winners and other entries in the annual UK contemporary art competition Beck's Futures coming to Glasgow, and the works of Steven Campbell, Alison Watt and Peter Howson among others in Scottish Art 1976-1989 at Dundee Contemporary Arts. In the theatrical arts, the cities' major theatres launched their autumn seasons, while Glasgow saw a hit of this year's Edinburgh Fringe, Further Than The Furthest Thing, en route to London's Royal national Theatre and - coming the other way - the Royal National Theatre's groundbreaking Hamlet fresh from London.

September-October is a particularly good time to be in Scotland not just because the countryside takes on its autumnal colours but weather-wise, like May-June, the days are still long and sunnier and the nights more star-lit; and as the Scottish Tourist Board, now in the middle of its Autumn Gold campaign, points out, there are plenty of bargain breaks around, from three-bedroom self catering lodges at £40 per night to five-start luxury dinner, bed and breakfast at £150 per couple per night. Check its web site on www.visitscotland.com.

Children haven't missed out, either, even if they're back at school: Alongside the many existing attractions, younger ones got Red, a new play by children's playwright Catherine Reekie, older ones got a new highly interactive exhibit on Scotland Shaping A Nation, including a virtual helicopter ride at Edinburgh's Fountainpark entertainment complex, and next month a new Imax cinema opens on the fast-developing Glasgow Science Centre site.

Back to Business
OK, life can't all be fun. But work and business already looks like doing more than settling into some hum-drum equinoctial grind in the next few months - particularly in the technology sector.

After waiting (like everyone else) to see if the dot.com vogue would create a bow wave or a backwash on stock markets, a whole cluster of young Scottish high-tech companies are starting to pile into IPOs. Video transmission technology specialist IndigoVision kicked off the trend in August, and now scanner software company BuzzSoft, knowledge management software producer Orbital, and data analysis software provider Quadstone are among those expected to float this year.

Behind them is an even bigger, and growing, array of Scottish technology companies working their way through various stages of development. Not unassociated with this is a parallel broadening of sources of funds, from Scottish Equity Partners and other venture capital houses to individual investors, and of advice, from major Scottish law firms such as McGrigor Donald to new boutique operations, all assiduously focusing on their particular strengths and expertise in this sector. As these players further hone down their own roles, whether it's investing in particular types of technology, protecting intellectual property or putting forward the right individual to fill a gap in the management team, I've found that - far from creating a more fragmented market - they've shown great willingness for other specialists to come in alongside with their own investment or advisory knowledge to make up the team and bring the project forward quickly and seamlessly.

Incomers
At the larger investment end, a whole new phase of complementary broadening has suddenly become evident, notably in chip design and production. September was but a few days old when Motorola announced it was building a global technology centre specialising in researching and designing embedded software for the mobile phone and car industries. It cited as one reason the ease with which it believes the 550 jobs to be created will be filled from Scotland's wealth of engineering talent. Shortly after, news came that California-based Chameleon Systems was also heading Scotland's way.

Meanwhile, the Alba Campus in Livingston - the hub of Scotland's advanced semi-conductor design industry initiative - is to benfit from new construction investment by a joint venture company involving both the public and private sectors. Scottish Enterprise, Alba's progenitor, has also invited development bids for a portfolio of property pooled by it and local enterprise companies to create even more premises across Central Scotland for the lik4es of technology and Internet companies.

More space, more opportunity for technology companies both indigenous and incoming and for their specialised staff. It's now a gathering trend that looks set on firm foundations - and by no means what you could call a seasonal thing.

Neil Fitzgerald

Note: This column has been written on behalf of the Alba Centre. To the best of our knowledge all the information is correct and has been compiled from published sources.

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