Category: socialware-offline

Booktour.com and geekdinners

Book Tour. Where authors and audiences meet

I was listening to Technation on ITconverations today and Moira Gunn was talking to the guys behind booktour.com. It sounds fantastic, and really useful for getting guest for future geekdinners. But what suprised me was the fact Chris Anderson was behind it too. Hummm, I wonder if his experience of selling the Long Tail around the world might have convinced him that this would be a good idea? Also I wonder if last year when we had that geekdinner for him (within 7 days of him saying yes by the way) could still be good memory for him? That night we had about 140 people turn up and Chris was really looking forward to chilling out with Geeks after a quite aggressive book tour. He stayed pretty much till the end and signed books with a huge smile on his face.

Who knows maybe one day we will get the likes of Steven Levitt, Malcolm Gladwell, Stowe Boyd and Joi ito

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Backstage in Edinburgh for TV Un-festival, 25th August

Post it notes heaven

Following on from Hackday we've been planning something a little different at Backstage. This time we're getting involved in the Edinburgh TV festival and putting together a special event right out of the BarCamp book.

This year the MGEITF (Media Guardian International TV Festival) has spawned its own fringe event, the TV Un-Festival. This day-long event which takes place on Saturday 25 August will centre around the clash of the well established TV world and the constantly accelerating Internet world using the unusual un-conference format, where the cost of entry is participation.

The highlights from the TV Un-Festival will be presented at this special event, giving everyone a chance to speculate on the future of TV, online entertainment and cross platform narratives.

This year the TV Un-Festivial hosted by Backstage.bbc.co.uk and guided along by the fabulous Suw Charman, aims to explorer the clash with in a series of free formed sessions similar to BarCamp known as unconference style. Everyone will be able to participate by using one of the free 30 minute slots which will be available.

So between the lines, this event will take the essence of barcamp and un-conferences and put it in area which is usually about formal sessions and structure, the Edinburgh TV Festival. We're not using the same venue because that would be far too frantic. But we're not far from the other venue and people who come to the un-festival will have access to the festival on Saturday night and Sunday all day for free. Hows that for a great deal? The ticket for this years festival is over 400 pounds but the TV festival recognise they need more diversity in their audience and have put their money where their mouth's have been. This also easily covers the price of going to Edinburgh and checking into a hotel, which I know if bloody hard at this very moment. I also wish I'd told people a lot earlier but we need to get the correct sign off from everyone involved

So who will be there? is what I keep being asked. Well we have a list of names on the site but generally we have a selection of established names like the BBC, BT, etc. Then we have some more internet based startups like Blip.TV, Joost, etc. I then invited a load of dark net people like Ian Clarke who wrote Freenet and is currently working on Thoof. On a slight tangent we have the Hon brothers who work for Mind Candy and built Perplexcity. My thinking is that Cross platform narrative runs right through this un-festival and that's why I'm interested in getting the ARG people and Video game people also in the same room with more traditional online video people. Last but not least I'm really keen to get Videobloggers and TV hackers together in the same space too but this looks to difficult due to the total lack of cross over between each area. So anyway you can see its going to be a very diverse event.

If your interested and I really think you should be, Signup now and we'll see you in Edinburgh.

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Events i’m going to this month in London

Here's a quick guide of some of the things I'm doing this month in London. Hope to see you at one or more of them.

  • Geekdinner with Brady Forrest at Ye Olde Cock Tavern
    This is going to be a great geekdinner, Brady is a big figure at all O'reilly conferences. He's usually the one asking the tricky questions and chairing the biggest names. Well this time around he's on the hot seat.
    • XSLUG July Meet at the Business Lounge, in Bush House
    In the 3rd XSL user group meeting, we've decided to discuss pipelines in front of a computer instead of at a pub. The BBC will be hosting this small event in Bush House. I'll be explaining why Pipelines are very cool and should be used for anything slighty complex. I'm going to recommend reading Jenni Tensions paper from Xtech 05 first.
  • MOO's Hot and Sticky Summer Party at The Ambassador in Exmouth Market
    Not quite sure whats going to happen on the night but Moo.com are launching stickers which hopefully will be very cool. More details on their blog
  • MiniBar July in Corbet Place, off Brick Lane.
    Its Minibar again, usual Friday night get together, should be cool.

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D.construct tickets now available

Tickets for the popular web deign and development conference, dConstruct 2007, go on sale on Today (10th July) at 11am (about the time I post this hopefully). Tickets usually sell out very fast. So what you waiting for? At less that 100 pounds for a Friday conference in Brighton you can't go wrong.

Don't forget to hang around for social events on Friday night and BarCampBrighton on Saturday and Sunday

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London Geekdinner with Julie Howell

This time a local superstar. Julie Howell from Fortune cookie previously with RNIB. The geekdinner started off slowly, I was a little upset that the bar upstairs wasn't to be opened with our favorite barmaid Henryetta. Most people turned up around 7:40pm and Julie turned up about the same. Unfortually due to all the flooding in the midlands, Julie was deeply worried about her house and her trip home, so said she would leave pretty soon after speaking.

When the food came out which just on a side point was enough to feed everyone including vegans and people with dangerous allergies (see I do care and ask about you guys). i gave a brief introduction to Julie and off she went.

I don't know how she did it but she managed to cover not only her past but accessibility now and in the future. See I told you she was good. There were plenty of questions afterwards about a whole host of things to do with Julie and her job. I think we over ran by about 10mins, so I had to cut it short knowing Julie had a long trip a head of her. Actually she emailed me the next day and said she never got home till after 1am!

So it was great to hear Julie talk again, she really held the geeks attention with the highs and lows of her life. Julie also attracted a quite a diverse crowd of geeks which was great again. Even the female Aral (marion)  turned up for he first London social event. After the event a couple of the guys went out drinking to really end the evening, I made my excuses but I did hear it was a good end to the night.

I thank everyone who turned up and made Julie welcome and look forward to hearing how Brighton Girl Geekdinners goes for Julie. I was actually going to recommend Julie to Sarah Blow of the London girl geekdinners.

I'm looking to run another werewolf night in July and maybe have a special geekdinner with another out of towner in July. Details as I get them, but yes you can also join the London Geekdinner Facebook group, but for some reason its not working as expected.

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London Geekdinner with Jyri from Jaiku

I made the mistake once again of not actually taking any stickers for my laptop. Damm it! Its also worth mentioning Guy West has put the video of Jyri's talk up here and Improbulus has a much deeper review of the night that I ever could write. I don't know how she does it but honestly when Improbulus covers something she does it so deep you feel the burn marks on the event or gadget.

So generally the event was boosted when Jason Canacus decided to come along too. Luckly he didn't steal the limelight from our guest Jyri. Actually to be honest Jyri was flipping awesome. He really controlled the room well, I hardly had to step into the conversation and there were some real strong personalities in the room.

We had about 50 people turn up for this geekdinner in our new home for geekdinners the Ye Olde Cock Tavern on Fleet Street. The venue worked well but the heat level in room was pretty high, so thats something to remember for next time. The microphone worked really well but there was a jazz playing upstairs which was strange and somewhat entertaining.

I did get around to seeing almost everyone including Dan Gilmor who I missed earlier that day due to hackday meetings. Jason is one of those people I kind of don't mind. Ok don't take this the wrong way but Ben Metcafe, Jason and a few other out-spoken people I know are quite simlar and I don't mind them while others hate them for there outspokeness. Funny enough the same group of people (not mentioning any names).I don't mind them because Jason seems to be the kind of person who would call bullshit if he saw it. I know this puts people backs up, but generally I think you need people like this otherwise you get people like Mena talking at Le Web 2.0. Enough said really.

Anyway the event went really well and we had quite a different group of people turn up, this was good because even Hugh McCloud seemed to be enjoying the geekdinner. Sucessful geekdinner with some high profile people. Thanks Jyri for agreeing to do the dinner and standing up giving us a free preview of whats was to come at the NMK forum the next day. Oh thanks to Ian from NMK for everything he did.

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Events next week

Quick reminder for everyone, its going to be a busy week.

I hear Molly is in town, so hopefully she can make the Geekdinner with Julie or even the Werewolf night.

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Back from Hackday London and I’m so tired….

So tired I can't write a compete entry… Here's some classic pictures instead.

BBC Iplayer in Facebook

Aral playing with the Nabaztag

Euan with the Diet Coke rockets

Matthew talking about what just happened in the West Hall

Umbrellas up while the West Hall lets the rain in pour in. Hacker spirit

The scene as the West hall starts to slide open

Myself and Matt on stage

So at long last a update to Hackday.

Hackday was great. Very different from BarCampLondon which was a good thing. Highlights of the day included lightning hitting Alexandra Palace twice and the building going into protective mode by opening all the skylights and letting the rain come in.

Wireless was a problem on the first day but got solved after dinner on Saturday. Actually through out the night it was flawless. I personally don't think it was just load because Sunday morning everyone was hacking away trying to get stuff done before the deadline of 2pm. I think Wireless generally is a problem and we try to minimise that problem by creating pools of non conflicting wireless instead of flooding the room with wireless. Obviously something worked so this is good to remember for future events. Talking to the BT engineers was also interesting because they talked alot about 802.11a being the thing to solve all these problems. It will change channels automaticlly to stop conflicts. So yes anyone with the newer intel chipsets would have got a better experience if we had turned some of the wireless points to A only. We didn';t know the percentage of new vs old laptops so we went with the safe 802.11b/g

A negative comment comes in the form of food. There was food and snacks but generally we could really have done with a selection from Ocrdo or something. I generally got sick of eating dry as hell pizza after a while. When I got home on Sunday I ordered a nice curry because it was so dry all weekend. It was good there was a endless supply of coffee and tea but I really really wanted something different that a chocolate bar through-out the night.

The work of the developers was great, lots of hacks and plenty of variety. I won't list the winners because that will be on the backstage site one day soon. but yes good stuff from the 480 developers.

The event went pretty smoothly through-out Sunday and we were wrong about how long it would take to go through the hacks. I did think it was a shame that the time was then wasted playing flickrball on stage while the crowd watched for another 5mins. We should have ended earlier and gave more time for people to walk around not subject them to a un-inspiring game. Hey we could have desplayed the results of the hackday game which was created. Another thing we should have done is used the main screen more for infomration. A dedicated machine with yahoo widgets, 3 windows one for twitters to the hackday bot, one blank for quick messages and another refreshing the backnetwork. We should never have had Matthew's odd collection of music on through out the hacking period. Honestly people kept asking for it to be turned down or turned off. What would I have replaced it with? I don't know maybe nothing. I know it sounded dead but most hackers wanted that.

As always this whole thing sounds a little negative and its not meant to be. It was a great event but we need to learn for next time for sure. This further proves London and Europe is a great place for development and geek events like this. Even Yahoo didn't expect such a grand event

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London geekdinner with Becky Hogge

The last geekdinner with Becky Hogge of the Open Rights Group was another good success. It was a much smaller affair that ever before but we certainly had a lot of fun. The new venue was good but I didn't know we were going to be at the very top of the pub. Some people after wards also told me they went to the Bear venue.

Anyway this time we had over 50% new people and a quite heated debate about digital rights. I really wished I'd recorded it video camera or at least Tom could have recorded it for the new podcast show.

Becky was great and I got a feeling we will have to have her back again.

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London Google Girl Geekdinner

I went a fine girl geekdinner tonight. This time hosted by Google at their UK headquarters in Victoria. Took some time to get there but arrived in time for some Google style dinner. Can I just say how great a idea it is having free dinner between the hours of 6pm-8pm, if the BBC did that I'd be there till 10pm every night I wasn't going out. Anyway, the dinner was good and treats even better. I also enjoyed the speeches from Google and Foundem (A Search Platform). It was a great venue and great to see Google once again getting more involved in the local community. Kudos to Sarah Blow and Nicola for once again another great girl geekdinner.

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