Category: socialware-offline

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.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

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.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

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

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

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.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

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.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Takeaway Festival 2: DIY Talks

Dana Centre talks

I was asked to talk at the Takeaway fest yesterday. My talk was after a total of 9 different talks, so I knew I was going to have to keep it super short anyway. But as usual everyone ran over and I had less that 6 mins to explain why Hackday was going to be ever so great for the audience of artists and designers. I even created some slides for the purpose. I felt I did a good job in the short amount of time till I put on the video of Becks puppets and no one laughed. I'm hoping it was just tiredness setting in or something…

Something also struck me about the different stages people were at. For example Briony Greenhill was talking about the new site which encourages people to be a little more greener every month. She demoed it and I was amazed at its lack of (if I had a better word I would use it) Web 2.0ness. First of all it seemed to be built totally in Flash and seemed very unaccessible and somewhat unusable (but I was wrong, its using elements of Flash and lots of images with no alts). Then I looked for other web 2.0 type things like the ability to have friends, take elements away, a feed, an api, openid, microformats, etc. Nope nothing. Maybe I'm being over the top and its not fair to just pick on Briony but it strikes me that there was quite a bit of re-engineering instead of building on whats already there. Another silo to get wrapped up in.

Generally there were some very good speakers and good presentations. I specially loved the OScar project, which I've heard of before. I have to be honest and say Swarm of Angels is becoming less and less interesting to me everytime I read about it.

Anyway, I filmed a good selection of talks

and they should be up on Blip.tv in the next few hours, I'll replace the links once they appear.

meta-technorati-tags=takeaway2, festival, diy, talks, conference, design, interaction, art, time, danacentre

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

A different type of conference?

Werewolf

From Tom Morris

I've got this great idea for a conference

First, it'd have a session called “Pop Culture and Democracy” which would discuss whether the Internet culture's of remixing popular culture helps in democratic participation and related areas. Just over an hour long. Then I'd have a panel of tech people talking about microformats, spam, Creative Commons and anything else that seems interesting or relevant. After that a short discussion from a researcher talking about the Semantic Web. Next, a half hour session or so on Python programming. Then just under fifty minutes of Cory Doctorow doing all the usual Cory things – copyright, DRM, evil Microsoft etc. A discussion of the role of developers, then an hour on the One Laptop Per Child project. Sound like a cool conference? That's good. It's a list of the podcasts I'm going to listen to. Podcasts are what conferences have become.

Point taken about the podcasts but I would say a BarCamp (unconference) is pretty close to what your getting at. However there is certainly something between a unconference and conference which could be reached. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens with d.construct and barcampbrighton in September. Conference+UnConference in one weekend, should be great.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

April in New York

Sarah and Ian

I did spent almost a week in New York with Sarah. We did enjoy our time there but wasn't as impressed as most people are. I guess living in a huge metropolis of a city like London makes all other huge cities feel quite the same. Obviously there were huge differences for example the London underground is so deep compared to the New York Subway. You can always feel when a train is traveling under your feet.

I did go out for dinner and meetup with David Czarnecki and a whole host of other New Yorkers on Friday night.

Dinner with the New Yorkers

Saturday afternoon a work out in Central Park while a bunch of us play Frisbee 2.0

Me after the game

Then headed over to Bre's for a BBQ in his apartment 10 stories up near hells kitchen. Honestly his apartment was very cool and the space was simply amazing.

10 floors up at Brie's

Obviously we did lots more stuff including seeing the Daily Show being recorded (Rachel has the low down on this one), some time at the top of the Rockefella building, a boat tour around manhattan, lots of walking around and believe it or not we actually went to New Jersey. Not out of choice, more a mistake by our shuttle bus who thought we were going to Newark with everyone else. After a verbal fight we headed back into New York to get to JFK before our flight at 8:30am. 

New York New York

Anyway I got about 300 pictures now on Flickr from New York so go check them out. Thanks again to Rachel for putting up with me and Sarah during the week.

meta-technorati-tags=newyork, ny, bigapple, dailyshow, rockafella, buildings, frisbee, dinner

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Oh no… here comes the (so called) geek squad

Geek Squad comes to the UK

Oh yes if you've ever been to Best Buy in America, you can't help but notice the geek squad signs everywhere. Need a hand installing your DSL router, putting in memory, fixing your wireless, going to the toilet, feeding yourself… – Call for the geek squad.

But now there in the UK, yes scream and runaway. Trust me people, there not cheap and there certainly not good news. Thanks Carphone Warehouse for inflicting the pain of black and white beetle cars on our roads, and don't get me started on the actual (so called) geeks.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Mashup* Identity 2.0

So first up I'm not that impressed with being invited to an event, turning up and not finding my name on the list. Then a slap in the face when I get hit with a bill for 35 pounds. Having no cash, means I'm forced to hand over my business card so they can invoice me. Not impressed!

Down into the BT showcase area and the magic of the not long gone BarCampLondon2. Who do I see? Nat Bat, my co-hoster from BarCampLondon2. Thank god because all I can see otherwise is lots of gray suits.

Tony Fish introduces the evening by ending with the words “how do we make money from this?” Enough said really

The first speaker gives a brief overview of the all the issues to do with identity. But never once talks about people owning their own identity. Richard Baker from BT now, finally he mentions user-centric and multiple identities/personas. He also mentions that fact we need to think about the other mediums in regards to identity. His example of call centres is good. Richard finalise his talk by pointing at the balance between risk, convince, costs. Nice sensible talk. Now Simon Wilison, so the wireless fucks up and simon can't show how it works – nightmare! So on with the show. After explaining the benefits of open ID in the Single sign on, simon talks about identity projection. Projecting your id from one system to another. Thankfully Simon mentions that OpenID isn't the silver bullet, there are caveats like trust. Simon gives a cut down talk from the future of webapps. Fast paced and maybe lost a few people but it was really good. At the end, Simon finally got to demo openID.

Now the Panel. Eger from the government slates openID because its too difficult for most users in the UK. Missing the point of Open ID, which is, its open and decentralized. Most of the questions about Open ID were easy pickings for Simon who rubbed his hands with glee when getting those OpenID 101 questions. There were some good questions banded around at the end but by then the hour long debate had gone on too long for most of us.

So generally Mashup reminds me of the events I use to go to when I first moved to London. There good if your into business but generally only scratch the surface and usually the people want to know how to make money out of the thing under the surface. I'm surprised no one just came out and said where do I make money out of Open ID, maybe because Simons slide on why the enterprise should be using OpenID was too clear?

The event was well run but I felt the most important person there was Simon and besides the internet screw up, he could have had more challenging questions at a geekdinner or something. I have to question the cost of the event too. Its quite a lot for 3x 10min talks and then a hour panel session. Yes there was buffet food and drinks for free but thats 35x 100+ people. Maybe I'm dead wrong but personally I didn't get much out of the evening except a couple of peoples contract details.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Powerpoint Karaoke, what a wicked night!

Powerpoint Karaoke

Not many people turned up (maybe because of this thing)  for Powerpoint Karaoke but those who did really enjoyed the night of belly aching laughter and ever so odd presentations. I have a few photos which I've uploaded to Flickr but better still I have quite a few videos which I'll be uploading to Blip.tv.

Everyone agreed this is hysterical entertainment and can not wait for the next one. So if your one of the unlucky ones to miss out this time around, look out for the next one in maybe May/June. Its truly geek entertainment by geeks for geeks.

meta-technorati-tags=powerpointkaraoke, karaoke, powerpoint, presentation, ppt, funny, hysterical, geek, geekentertainment

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Hackday officially live – sign up now

hackday in Sunnyville

As previously mentioned on the backstage blog. Hackday.org is now official and you can sign up and grab yourself a ticket now.

The dates are the weekend of the 16th – 17th June at Alexander Palace (yes now it makes sense why I had pictures of the venue on my flickr stream)

Its a partnership between Yahoo! Developer Network and BBC Backstage, which we've been developing for quite sometime. Matthew Cashmore, Tom Coates, Matt McAlister and many others have been involved in this from the start.

As the hackday.org site says, stimulation will be provided in Food, Drinks, Feeds and APIs. Like BarCamp, you are welcome to play werewolf sorry hack or (sleep) through-out the night. Tomski's already offered his shower for Sunday morning. Its going to be a very cool event. No I won't
be doing a live DJ session from stage 1 afterwards but nor will Beck this time around.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Geekdinners, Werewolf, Delicious and Karaoke

Tom Loosemore plays ppt karakoe

There's changes on the way for geekdinners. Starting with PPT Karaoke

  1. The dinners are not changing, we're still planning on having them but maybe one every 1-2 months. I also won't be the only one hosting them now. I'm seeking keen and genuine volunteers to be involved with geekinners and its other events.
  2. We're going to put on a werewolf night every other month. Its such great fun and we always get a good turn out, so rather that doing adhoc, we're going to try putting them on regularly. If every other month is too little, we'll bump it up to every month.
  3. New geek games. Werewolf as we play it came back from O'reilly's FooCamp with Simon Willison and a couple others. They posed it at BarCampLondon, and its now become a stable diet for evening geek events and UK Barcamps. But there is more games out there which we could try, hence the next point.
  4. A Powerpoint Karaoke session happened at Etech 07 and Heatherscent was talking about how well it went down at BarCampLA3. So first time in the UK we're going to try it out and if it goes well, who knows it might become a regular night. Its gone down well other places too.
  5. Not forgetting the talent we have here in the UK, we're also going to play Del.icio.us Pecha Kucha, maybe along side PPT Karaoke. It was created and built for BarCampLondon and went down a storm in BarCampLondon2. I have got to link to the video of Meri Williams, Tom Coates and the rest playing this…
  6. We're planning to do more short notice dinners (yes real dinners) for when people are over but we can't get a venue in the short period of time we sometimes have. Like the dinner we had for Howard Rheingold. .

So in short we're getting more organized and more regular. But expect even more…

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

London XSL user group

Its been a long time coming but finally there is a London XSL user group starting. Its thankfully not run or setup by myself, instead Nic Ferrier and Otu Ekanem have taken it upon themselves to foster this user group.

We met at the Prince Regents Pub yesterday and there seemed to be agreement that a group meeting every month to discuss things happening in the XSL space outside of actual code was a good idea. No one wants to discuss the memory differences between using xsl:for-each in Xalan vs Saxon, so the group will centre around improving the image of XSL and helping people get into XSL in the first place.

It was reassuring to hear Thompson and BT were having the same issues hiring good XSL people as we are in the BBC. The fact is that most computer science university courses don't teach XSL and if they do its placed next to odd languages like Pascal (god I hope they don't still teach that) and Lisp for a couple of day.

Another interesting fact came out of the night, 2 out of the 6 of us came to XSL through a design background. Anyway expect to see more about the group at xslug.org

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Support ORG and Party

Party starts Wednesday 11th April from 6pm at Bar Kick. Straight from the ORG party site

A chance for ORG supporters to meet each other, chat to volunteers and staff and celebrate how far we’ve all come since ORG started. There’ll be 'public domain' DJs, remixed visuals and free culture goodie bags, as well as a special guest speaker to be announced.

Beneath all this revelry lies a hidden motive. We need you to bring a friend, colleague or family member who doesn't yet support ORG, but who you think would like to, if they knew more about our work. 

The party starts at 6pm on Wednesday 11 April at Bar Kick, E1, and lasts until 11pm. See you there!

I'll certainly be there and who knows might be a regular ORG supporter.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]