socialware-offline – Page 11 – Cubicgarden.com…

Werewolf night yesterday

Sheila vs Sheila, but are they both werewolves really?

So yesterday I setup the first Werewolf only night in London. It started badly, with me running late. I should have factored in 40mins from White City to Moorgate not 20mins. Plus work demands meant I was running late full stop. Turned up and the bar had set a-side a area, but it was right next to the main bar and it simply wouldn't have worked. However what had happened was a mixup on the bar's part. They had booked the wrong area. So after 15mins of drinks and talking, we moved to the private suite which held about 25 people. There was a large table which made things tricky, so our circle looked more like a squashed triangle. Anyway once a few of us had explained the rules and run through a few tatics, we were off into the 1st game.

I don't remember all the games (think we ended up playing up to 6?)but I certainly remember the one when I was a werewolf with Tiff and Frances. Sheila (australian sheila) pointed the finger at me early on because I had pointed the camera at the victim of the first night attack. I think it was a guess but she was right, so I came out as the seer. Then someone else did and after a while Sheila (aus) did too. But it started to work, I got off and started to pretend to check people every round. People started to believe after a while. And my thoughts about killing myself off to keep the werewolves winning, didn't need to happen. We won and I believe the other werewolves never got fingered once. It was certainly an adrenalin rush and couldn't help but stand up and put my arms up in the air at the end. Harry was gutted because he never believed me as the seer then slowly started to believe and so got taken in by my lies. Oh well thats the way it goes… Deception is such a great thing.

So without going into more detail about the games played, we had roughtly at one point 17 or 18 people enough for 3 werewolves, a seer and a healer. The smallest game was 14 people with 2 werewolves and a seer. Everyone enjoyed the night and would happily go to another one. So I'm going to speak to the venue about removing the table next time and maybe getting a large food order at the start of the game instead. Maybe it might also be worth spending money on getting all our drinks delivered to the room, so the breaks between won't be so long? As usual there's my pictures here and public pictures here.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

London Backstage Christmas Party, Saturday 9th Dec

So its now no real secret. I'm planning a big christmas party for BBC Backstage. The difference is that rather than going it alone and creating a whole lot of havoc with everyone elses plans. I decided that Backstage should actually talk to the rest of the community groups in London and encourage one big party. This is core to the BBC Backstage values, rather than go it alone we're going to see whats already out there and see if we can help out, encourage more take up or parcipitation. Anyway, so after the emails went out, I started getting into conversations with different groups and got a line up to rival all line ups. And on Friday night at the geekdinner I revealed the party plans.

To make things clearer, I posted up the details on the Backstage blog and then with the advice of Rob, hit Upcoming and Eventful

Yes the rumours are true…

There is a BBC Backstage Christmas Party being planned for Saturday 9th December in London.

Rather than host it ourselves and clash with everyone else's parties. We decided that it would be very fitting to backstage if we collaborated together some of the best groups and communities in London. Then got them under one roof to share in the Christmas Party…

Seemed like a crazy idea, but I would like to introduce our fantastic partners for the Christmas Bash,

Swedish Beers
London Girl Geekdinners
Geekdinners
London Perlmongers
London Webstandards Group
London Ruby user group
Open rights group
London 2.0
Momo Monday

We have an excellent Cuban venue (TBC) all to ourselves deep in the area of Moorgate and Citypoint.

So please keep a note in your calendar, as Saturday 9th December looks to be a fantastic night to be in London.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Last night’s Geekdinner with Molly was great

So once again, another highly successful geekdinner, this time with Molly. Believe it or not, but I was late for the party and as host, this is very bad form. I thought to myself, as I ran from waterloo up and down stairs till I reached City Thameslink. If I get there before Molly at least that would be a good thing. When I arrived, I was met with about 40 people drinking and enjoying themselves and Molly's great smile. Oh well I failed. But by the time I had got a drink and cooled off a little, everything was in full swing.

Its great that geekdinner's has got to such a point that people can just gather and enjoy the evening. I just wondered around looking for people who I've never met. Give them a nice introduction to others and geekdinners. In total I counted 60 people which was a great achivement. I do worry about geekdinners getting too big, but to date its still not happened quite yet. I feel the day I can't have a word with everyone, then geekdinners will have lost something. Not to say I won't do large events in the future, they just won't be geekdinners.

At the speaking part of the Geekdinner, Chris Helimann gave Molly some Lush goodies (chris i owe you one), Molly announced that she's going to live in London for a month trial in January and I announced the BBC Backstage London Christmas bash. So there is quite alot to talk about, but I may seperate my news out into another blog post.

The only down side to the night was the venue. See I had a deal with the old management that we could stay till 11pm, which is normal pub drink up time. But the bottlescrew have this thing about closing at 10pm, So last orders got called about 9:50pm and they started kicking us out by about 10:20pm. People gathered outside saying what the hell was that about and that we should find somewhere to drink. So in the hour between 10:30pm and 11:30pm we (about 20+ people) kind of slowly walked up the road towards Holborn station. It was wicked fun and there was great fun had outside some building as we tried to get everyone in for a group photo. By the time we actually got Holborn, most of the pubs were shut and people didn't want to walk all the way to Soho for one more drink. I think, me, sheila and a guy from Norway were the last to leave from the geekdinner. And that must have been just before midnight.

So seriously that was a great geekdinner, I really enjoyed it and totally forgot I was shattered and had not slept well the whole week.

Molly, when your over here for the month, we either need to do a geekdinner or have a welcome to London party for you. And for all those interested, I'm going to look into using another venue for the next geekdinner. The venue has lots of advantages when it was summer

You can find pictures here and here. Oh my god there's a crazy picture of me.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Statistics and hints for Werewolf

A Game of Deception, Paranoia, and Mob Rule

I was looking around for more information to link to on the upcoming werewolf night. And anyway found one of the best resources for Werewolf playing. But what I found very interesting was the statictics page.


one wolf)
 3 players: humans win 0
 4 players: humans win 0
 5 players: humans win 0.334
 6 players: humans win 0.250
 7 players: humans win 0.466
 8 players: humans win 0.374
 9 players: humans win 0.544
10 players: humans win 0.453
11 players: humans win 0.593
12 players: humans win 0.508
13 players: humans win 0.630
14 players: humans win 0.548
15 players: humans win 0.659

two wolves)
 5 players: humans win 0
 6 players: humans win 0
 7 players: humans win 0.133
 8 players: humans win 0.083
 9 players: humans win 0.229
10 players: humans win 0.157
11 players: humans win 0.299
12 players: humans win 0.215
13 players: humans win 0.352
14 players: humans win 0.264
15 players: humans win 0.395

On the tactics front, I was reading lots of stuff but it seems like this all makes sense to any player. Notice who supports certain people when voting and debating. Notice who doesn't say anything and who speaks a lot during the daytime. Consider who acts differently and under what conditions.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Events planned for Friday and the next few months

So I've been very quiet about my Backstage job on my own blog, according someone I recently spoke to (yes you who just got a new flat, you know who you are). But its not because I don't want to talk about it or because I can't. Its because I'm so damm busy! This is a good thing because everyday there is something new to deal with and on going projects which were just kick starting.

Along with my new job at Backstage.bbc.co.uk, is event planning. Being the public facing developer network which backstage is, this will mean lots of events up and down the country (yes not just London). Its not a problem to give you an insight into some of the events were planning. Yes this is a good chance to get them in your diary or calendar so you don't miss them…

So first up is the Geekdinner with Molly which has nothing to do with backstage at all. This is shaping up to be a large geekdinner with at least 70 people signed up to come. I'm going to have a word with the pub manager because actually were going to take over the whole bar if it rains or is cold outside. In the past, we've been able to use the benches but in late October this may be a problem. I may also have to invest in a microphone and speaker setup because with so many people it may be a problem hearing Molly, although being from New York shes use to making herself heard.

On October 31st we got the same venue for a great game of Werewolf, and what better day to play it? If you've never played before, don't worry come along its easy to pick up and ever so much fun. Specially when everyones been drinking. Don't drink too much or you may turn into a real werewolf…

Now were heading into new waters. On Monday 6th November were going to have the first new Backstage meetup to go with the backstage widget contest. The venue is not confirmed but it looks to be somewhere in the city maybe moorgate? We were thinking Fireworks but couldn't find a venue where we could set off fireworks (kidding!).

Now were certainly in new waters. I've contacted most of the groups and communities around London like Swedish Beers, Girl Geekdinners, etc and asked if they would like to take part in a large scale Christmas Bash. The Christmas Bash looks like it will happen sometime between Wednesday 6th December and Saturday 9th December. The venue is still under lots of consideration and partly depends on the amount of london groups who agreed to take part in the bash. But honestly it looks to be a good one, so please keep that part of December free if you can.

Hummm I've missed something? Ah yes, BarCampLondon2. Yes I'm still working on it and I might know soon what date and where it will be. I'm still going for late November but I don't have any more details to give quite yet sorry. Once I know anything all those who asked if they could help with the next one will know and I'll announce it to the world soon afterwards.

So yes quite a few London events, but fear not. I might have news for other parts of the UK soon. The best way to keep up to date with my events and others is using upcoming and also now the google calendar

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Who says the Social scene in London is nothing compared to San Fran?

Socialising at the geekdinner with Dave Shea

What the heck is going on? Next week is insane! There are tons of events going on in London next week. I'll outline the crazyness…

Monday there is a Symbian pub meetup and a Internet Peeps Dinner with Robert Loch.
Tuesday there is Beers and Innovations 5: Aggregators and upsetters, Swedish Beers and Opera backstage. London Mixer was also going to be on the same day but they changed it to the 18th due to the crazy clashing.
Wednesday there is London mixer and Innovation Wednesdays.
Thursday there is a Microformats WSG meetup, Imperial Entrepreneurs Society Launch and a Tech Crunch UK launch party
Friday there is a geekdinner with Molly.
Saturday game on kicks off and Sunday is a Copyfighters Drunken Brunch and talking shop

Now imagine if Momo Monday, Girl geekdinner and Pub Standards were all added to the mix! Someone needs to sort this all out. Its too insane that all these events are happening the same week.

So getting serious for a while now. To be fair everything is ending up on Upcoming which is a good thing. I was using Eventful for quite sometime but since most of the events are ending up on upcoming, i'm not going to fight it. So things are getting a little more origanised here but the problem is that the actual event holders are not looking at upcoming first let alone posting them. Then add the extra pain in the butt that you need to sign in to register yourself with an event, not everyone likes that. So actually things are not that rosey. I thought the Jigsaw wiki might be a good idea but it seems few people use it for events. Then I thought Techcrunch UK might bring some calm to the crazyness but nope, its not happened.

I've filled you all in on the context but this conversation has gone on a little longer in the TechCrunch comments on the same subject. The suggestion of using a google calendar by D4rr3ll sounds good but I'm not sure it solves the problem of sign up but it will certainly help with clashes. As he said a XSL would mean anyone could see it on a normal webpage, and yes using the API event.add or event new, it would be possible to automaticlly add it to Upcoming and Eventful.

So I've setup a Google account for London Social events which I'll email around to people who run events in London. The Calendar is here – http://www.google.com/calendar/render?cid=londonsocialevents@googlemail.com. You can subscribe to the RSS here and Ical here.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

My leaving do at Souk Medina

So I'm having a leaving do tomorrow night (29th Sept 2006). Its going to be at Souk Medina which is near Seven dials in Covert Garden. I have a space booked from 7pm, and expect to be there for most of the night. So feel free to come down and say hi or wave me off to my new position at backstage.bbc.co.uk. The lady holding the coffee tips will not be there, she had a leaving do there last year so it should be good fun. Hope to see you all there…

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Dinner Tonight with Howard Rheingold

If your in London today and would love to meet up for Dinner with Howard Rheingold of the SmartMobs and Virtual Community fame

This is very last minute and we are going to have a meal rather than the usual geekdinner. So expect to pay for a meal and drinks. The venue is undecided and will be decided on at some point during the evening. But I expect it will be near Victoria or Kensington.

Howard Rheingold is one of the world's foremost authorities on the social implications of technology. Over the past twenty years he has traveled around the world, observing and writing about emerging trends in computing, communications, and culture. One of the creators and former founding executive editor of HotWired, he has served as editor of The Whole Earth Review, editor-in-chief of The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog, and on-line host for The Well. The author of several books, including The Virtual Community, Virtual Reality, and Tools for Thought, he lives in Mill Valley, California.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]