The future of everything conference

I may have messed up the dates but for some reason I thought the Carson Workshops Future of webapps was on the same day as the BBC's digital futures conference. It looks like a early email mistake by someone might have been at fault. Either way I ended up going to the BBC's digital futures and not the future of webapps, but Licence to Roam's Racheal Clarke has written up quite a few of her notes which have been really useful. Thanks for that Racheal. Paul Hammond told me I need to check out Tom Coates presentation.

I'm tempted to upload my notes from digital future but one I don't/didn't write many notes and two my dyslexic mind means my notes make a lot of sense to me but not to anyone else. I usually have to tiidy stuff up afterwards if I'm going to give my notes to someone else. By the way I tried using Gobby which is the opensource and cross platform version of subedit on the mac. But not many people were using laptops and of those who were, they were all mac users. Anyhow I believe although it was a BBC staff event I'm sure I can talk about it publicly without a problem.

So who were the guests?

  • Ron Pompei
  • Matt Webb
  • Dan Hon and Adrian Hon
  • Natalie Jeremijenko
  • Jeffrey Veen

Honestly I actually enjoyed every single presentation and they were really varied. Natalie Jeremijenko was great but I quickly realised I had heard her before on IT Conversations. The only thing new I saw was the excellent idea of Howstuffismade.org But it was great to see her live and see the videos of the OOZ robotics and the feral robotics dogs project. It was great to see the Dan and Adrian Hon doing a presentation about Perplex City which is the first major ARG in the UK. And one I was involved in from day one. I was quite suprised by the openness of there presentation, as it seems they have lower the curtain and made the game a… game? Something which the American ARG's are very strict about. For those who have never checked out ARGs check out these links.. The curtain issue is like a line in the sand between the players and the game creators. In some previous ARGs the line has been over stepped and it was not uncommon for puppetmasters (general term used as they pull the strings of the game, I prefer game creators) to go into hiding during a game because people will and have followed them around as part of the game. I talked with Dan and Adrian a lot afterwards about there openness and previous mistakes by other games. I wanted to ask the questions in public at the event but didn't get a chance. But moving on, as I got a feeling I will end up back at ARGs again at some point soon.

Matt Webb was good but owning his book Mind Hacks meant I had heard and seen quite a lot of the presentation already. I think Matt gave a good presentation on a very difficult subject to present. He may have lost a few people on the way but made everything easily understandable by the end. I didn't get much time to talk to him afterwards but I'm sure our paths will cross at somepoint again. Talking of which. Matt Blackbelt Jones was the event afterwards and said he was subscriber to my blog and to keep up the good work. I was kind of blown away, like when I heard Doc Searls also reads this blog at one point. I wanted to ask Matt why he reads and how he deals with all the rants and grammer mistakes but he was on his way out, so maybe next time. Ron Pompei started ok and got much better towards the end. He talked about the different sides of people and our own ideniity. I think my notes on this one presentation will make more sense than any other. One thing to note was the progression graph which struck me as very cluetrainish.

Co author instead of consumer. dialogue instead of message, journey instead of the desitination, cooperation over corporation and status activities instead of status objects.

Jeffery Veen was fantastic and really rattled through his presentation which was about the buzz of Web 2.0 and why he felt it could be Bubble 2.0. After looking at what others thought of Web 2.0 including the audience and Tim O'reilly. He went on to prove that although Web 2.0 may be buzz word it does have some elements which do show a certain progression forward. Even out of the boom and bust cycle which has been going on for decades The whole presentation is here and worth looking at.

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Do you EVDO? No not on this side of the world

If I hear someone say EVDO again, I'm going to scream. I don't know any other country in the world which uses this 2.5g mobile data connetion? Except maybe Canada? Oh and Latin America? don't think so, but maybe someone could confirm this. I'm very sure its not used anywhere else including Russia, Eastern Europe, Africa, Middle East, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Eastern Asia or the Asia Pacific area. it seems to have been made by American mobile carrier to allow them to offer mobile internet type solutions without paying the stupid prices of 3G licences. Ok, Fair enough but now theres a split between the smartphones coming out (IMHO).

Theres a whole range which support GPRS, EDGE and UMTS (3G) which all seem to work together nicely. You can even go from one country to another with these phones and it works. Believe it or not I was able to get GPRS out of my SPV E200 when I last went to the midwest of America in 2004 thanks to Tmobile and AT&T. Then you got the rouge phones which only support EVDO. This would be fine but the rouge ones tend to be the Microsoft PocketPC or Windows Mobile 2005 devices. The type of device I've been looking forward to having one day soon. Thanks EVDO carriers for this split. Thank you very much. I can't really blame Microsoft because America is a bigger market when it comes to Mobile Data it would seem. I'm not only pointing the finger at American Carriers like Cingular but also much closer to home like my own which is Orange. If Orange would provide a more American like data tariff of 20 pounds for 100meg of Mobile data a month we may start to see more mobile data use and that would in turn attract Microsoft and others.

It must be killing Orange and other mobile operators over here that they paid such stupid prices for 3G and its actually better and quicker technology that EVDO but the customers are not using it much. They quote huge take ups of 3G phones but how many of those people actually regularly use 3G and how much data do they transfer? I bet the percentage of data per person is very low. And you can't be suprised when most operators are charging about 1 pound per meg if you don't buy in advance with a bundle. (This post could/should simply be about this really.) I do care that I can't get a 3G phone which runs Windows mobile 2005 in a smaller size than my ipaq. But also mobile data costs in the UK and Europe is stupidly priced and I would have thought in 2006 we would be moving away from these crazy prices. I mean can you blame me for waiting for a phone which supports Wifi? Roll on the Nokia N80 soon please Nokia.

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Tagging which way? How about my way?

Story telling fest

Looking though my to read at somepoint in the future tagged catagory in Great News I found this useful summary of the problem with tagging online at the moment. Tag formats: Can’t we all just get along? covers the main tagging applications online and shows the confusion between spaced keywords and the comma seperated method.

So where do I fall on this issue? Well although I use Flickr and Del.icio.us almost everyday, I think they could both do benefit from using commas to seperate tags. All the latest services which I've used which support tagging have used commas because they make a lot more sense. As Victor says in the comments,

commas are faster than quotes.

as i see it (in my own experience) tags can be annoying if you don’t really care about them when you have to enter them. Usually you care about them later on, when you cannot find what you’re looking for. but they’re still a(nother) time-consuming task.

i’d use fast, thus i’d use commas.

The only thing which puts me off commas is the language issue, which is that some languages use commas for other things. There was a suggestion to use semicolon but I feel that would go down like a listening to your ipod in a church service. Other solutions which I've seen around the web include autosensing spaces or commas and the Amazon box model type thing. Which I personally think sucks because it takes too long to fill them in. I wonder why no ones written a greasemonkey script to allow people to pick a method which will be translated across all tagging services. So I can type commas into Flickr and it just translates it into spaces for me. Yeah its very lazyweb stuff. But as FataL points out, this can't be that hard.

Computer now smart enough to parse them all:
south asia, africa = [south asia] [africa]
“south asia” africa = [south asia] [africa]
‘south asia’ africa = [south asia] [africa]
(south asia) africa = [south asia] [africa]
south asia – africa = [south asia] [africa]
It’s not so hard to program all this I believe.

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WikiWednesday in London

Wikiwednesday in London was a interesting affair. Its the first time I've ever been and I honestly can't remember how I found out about it. But about 12 people turned up and talked about everything web based. I know the theme for the evening was wikis but I don't think I spent much time talking about them past the intitial conversation with Shelia and a guy whos name which escapes me right now. Anyway before long more people turned up and we hooked up with the rest of the group which were already somewhere else in the bar. Like most events in London there was quite a bit of drinking, some snacks and a lot of good conversations. Before long people were leaving (about 9:30pm) which seemed a little early, but we all got work tomorrow.

Time for some name dropping I guess. Kathy and Nina for there fun and funky atitudes to geek culture. These women make any event so much more fun. I also learned that Kathy is actually from Bristol too, but sadly moved to the rivial city Bath (a very boring place for the young).I know the next geekdinner with Paul Boag is at a difficult time for quite a few people but Nina tried to convince me that I should change the date just for her alone. Nice try Nina, but you will be missed. A couple of stayed till the very end even after Ross Mayfield had left. Lars is one of those guys I've seen on wikis and blogs around the web but never met in person. Me and geez I'm bad with names talked about blogs, rss, aggregation and social networks for a while on the last lot of drinks. I can't remember this guy's name either but he works for Skype localisation and travels back and forth between Italy and England every 3 weeks. Although it sounds great, he admitted that its quite tiring and he never really gets to go out that much.

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Inkscape is simply great software

Inkscape logo

I would just love to say, I upgraded my inkscape the other day because I needed to do something using vectors. In my younger days I would instantly use Adobe Illustrator but I really don't feel the need to any more. Inkscape 4.3 is as stable as a brick house (honestly never crashed ever, like previous versions) and although not quite working quite like illustrator. I'm really getting into the way it works now. I also felt so happy about Inkscape, that I decided to add my core but simple illustration to the openclipart project. You can see the whole thing here, till they move it. I provided the object under a public domain licence, so anyone can do what they like to it. I was tempted to do a whole range for XML, XSD, CSS, etc. But thought I'd leave it for now. But maybe one day soon I'll do it. It feel so good to beable to do this with opensource software.

You can't help but feel the tables are turning and there will be enough openclipart and applications like Inkscape to do everything in a opensource environment. Oh whoops, of course there already is. But these new crop like Inkscape, Firefox, Thunderbird, VLC, Koffice, Scribus, Openoffice, Gimp, etc really are getting the basics right and win market and mindshare. The google code thing has got me thinking that actually its time I started working with SVG a lot more like I use to. I mean there are people who can see it now and its growing as more browsers come out supporting SVG. Expect to see more inline SVG on this blog as time goes on. I dropped a SVG in this page just for testing purposes. Hey and what a great name for software? Inkscape. What more can I say, oh did I say how great the connector tool is? OMNIGrapple? Don't need it, I got Inkscape thank you very much.

The new Connector tool was used for a preliminary design of these flowcharts, when it was critical to keep items connected all the time while looking for the best layout. The flowchart lines were then edited with the Node tool.Diagrammers everywhere will find this tool invaluable. Connectors stay attached and automatically route to avoid marked objects as the drawing is updated. After the layout work is finished, connectors can be adjusted with the node tool.

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Been using Tesco shopping service for about 7 years now?

I just read Jen's Groceries on demand post

Ever since the delivery guys mistakenly pressed our buzzer instead of the flat they needed, I’ve been intrigued with the idea of having groceries delivered. I had always thought such services were the domain of the physically challenged or wealthy.
Not that I need to whittle away at my scant reasons to leave the flat already, but I felt compelled to give the service a whirl. I have a Tesco ClubCard; I have a bank card. Tomorrow, I’ll have a kitchen full of groceries carried up two flights of stairs by cheerful delivery folk.

To be honest I love Tesco's Delivery service. The day I moved out of my parents house, I was getting Tesco to deliver my monthly shopping. It made sense, because having a 125cc scooter and a hectic lifestyle (college during the day and work in the cinema at night) there was no way I could find time to act like a zombie for a couple of hours, walking up and down the supermarket shelves. Then drag all the crap home without falling off my bike. Trust me I tried. It was painful. When I lived in Bromley, I use to drive over to Elmers End's 24 Hour Tesco at about 1am and do my shopping. A couple of times I could not carry it all and ended up going back and forth to get everything home. I hated it! So I opted to get everything delivered and would only pop into Tesco to get quick bits and bobs.

Even when me and Sarah got married and moved into our own place, the Tesco Delivery contunies. Sarah did spend a little bit of time getting use to stuff from this country by wondering around the local Tesco supermarket but in the end also opted for there online delivery. However now and then she will want to go shopping, for some unknown reason.

Shopping for me is just one of those life zapping things I could do without. I don't mind so much going and picking up a couple of things but any more than 10 items and I feel like my head will cave in. I think the problem lies with me working in Tesco for over a year while studying. I worked in the Tesco Cafe till they realised I was alergic to the cleaning material and moved me to check outs. On checks out I quickly made the move to night shift to better fit with my college hours. I mean at the time almost 7 pounds a hour to work from 10pm to 6am seemed like a good idea. I only had to work 2 days a week and earned enough to do all the stuff I wanted to do. But on the downside I learned to quickly hate the supermarkets bright lighting and depressive decor. Maybe its put me off for life? Sarah will tell any of you, I turn from a nice friendly guy into a moaning pain when I'm in a supermarket. Thank goodness for Tesco delivery.

I still remember when my manager was telling me about the new online shopping service which our store (Tesco Eastville, Bristol) was going to trial. I thought it was such a good idea and hoped to be the person picking the goods for the delivery but it was not to be. I also hoped it would be a huge hit and less people would come into the store. That obviously never happened. But it would certainly seem things have changed alot. At the time (maybe 1998) only Tesco was doing online home delivery. I think Watrose and Iceland followed a year later then Sainsburys. And to tell the truth Tesco's online offerings and service went from ok to great within a few years. They even offered a website and pocketpc application early on which I could browse on my ipaq. So I could look in the kitchen and simply add stuff without being tied to my desktop machine (didn't have a laptop or wifi at the time, only ipaq and gprs). And even now Tesco are doing little things to make the whole process even easier and enjoyable.

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Geek and Geekhag podcast number two – the wife acceptance factor

Me and Sarah's second podcast is now available online. Enjoy and please leave a comment if you've enjoyed it or simply hate it. The gist of the conversation is about me and Sarah talking about why we should get a Xbox 360 and LCD TV. And how the wife acceptance factor is important.

WAF is online speak meaning “Wife Acceptance Factor“. WAF represents the approval that the female in a stable couple has to bestow in order for a decision to be effectively adopted, typically when that decision refers to things in the domestic scope

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The next geekdinner will be with Paul Boag

Paul Boag

The next geekdinner will be next month on Thursday 23rd Feb and our guest for the night will be Paul Boag of the popular podcast Boagworld. The Boagworld podcast is aimed at those who are responsible for an organisation's website and would like practial advice on what they should or could be doing to improve the current site. Paul himself is a well established web designer usability/accessibility specialist and is a founder partner of Headscape which practice Webstandards when ever possible.

The venue has changed once again, this time were at the Polar Bear which is just a stone throw away from Leicester Square. The venue is larger than the one in Covent Garden, and a nicer cleaner deco. I'm also expecting the food will not run out like last time and at only 5 pound per head expect a more rounded buffet with food for vegetarians as well as meat eaters. There will also at long last be a PA system with Microphone for the guest and the Question and Answers session which follows. I'm also able to play what ever music I like at what ever level I like. So if anyones interested I can maybe put there ipod on shuffle mode and play it during the night at a low level.

As always expect a post on Geekdinner.co.uk soon and its been listed on Eventful and Upcoming.

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First views on channel4’s IT Crowd

The IT Crowd

So the IT Crowd is now available online for people wanting to check it out. The official site is or you can download directly from Channel4 using this link. Slashdot has a overview of comments.

So my own view is that its not bad, its got some funny scenarios but I don't see how there going to keep it up for more than 6 episodes which would be fine. There's quite a lot of taking the piss out of geeks, nerds and IT staff generally but to be fair this also applies to the non IT Staff trying to use computers (like the boss who thinks his computer is now voice controlled). Its certainly more mainstream than I expected which in this show is actually a good thing because its very accessable, even if it reforces the very obvious stereotypes. The IT Crowd feels really British, I can see why it got a bad review generally. The laughter track seems like a typical shown to a audience affair rather than American canned. For those interested in watching it on TV, its on Friday on Channel4. Expect it to be bit torrented everywhere really soon. By the way, I'm currently downloading Beauty and the geeks which Sheila recommended.

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Google Using SVG

A few days ago Google released a series of statistics on the way in which HTML (and a few other things, such as HTTP and scripting) is used in the wild, wild Web. As in any good statistics report they have accompanying graphical charts. The interesting aspect in this instance is that those charts are available only in SVG.

You will need a recent version of either Firefox, Opera, an SVG-enabled Safari build or Konqueror to see them, apparently due to minor markup issues that prevent IE and/or ASV from working. It certainly is interesting to see a major web site such as Google use SVG for live Web content. SVG support moving away from plugins and into browsers does appear to have the effect of helping it edge its way into the mainstream.

I thought about this the other day when looking through the fantastic series of Google Statistics. Good to see SVG used by a huge company like Google. I mean it makes sense to put the graphs in SVG format, but its a calculated risk on Googles part. And looks to have paid off, because I've not seen many people make a fuss about not seeing the graphs. Actually looking around the web svg is really starting to become a reality for general web use. It reminds me to check out the Canvas element and HTML 5 which were both mentioned at the last geekdinner with Dave Shea.

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Should I wait even longer or buy a mobile now?

In my overdue quest to get a new mobile phone I've started to get closer to a decision. Basicly I can even wait for the new range of Nokia Nseries phones or get a Nokia 6280 in a few weeks or even get a Orange SPV M500 for free right now.

So before going into details, my ideal list in order for the phone I want to get next.

  • 3G/GPRS access
  • Bluetooth dialup
  • 2 megapix camera
  • Hot swappable SD or MiniSD support
  • Screen resoultion of 320×240 or over
  • Mpeg4 or 3GP Video recording
  • SVG tiny support
  • Java (MDIP2.0) support
  • Media playback
  • Bluetooth 2.0 support
  • Quadband support (GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz)
  • USB mass storage ability
  • FM radio
  • MMC support
  • EDGE support
  • 3G video calling support

So first up why not the SPV M500 now? I've always liked this device, since the first day I saw one my students with one about 2 years ago but… Well you see its got no 3G only GPRS access. Not even EDGE which would be useful when I go to America or parts of Europe. The problem seem to be that the PocketPC and Windows Mobile range seems to be lacking 3G(UMTS) because the American operators are obsessed with EVDO not UMTS. So there not making many devices which support 3G at this moment. Ok that aside, its runs on PocketPC like my HP Ipaq 5550 but on the positive side the form factor is small enough to fit nicely into my pocket. But then again its exactly like my Ipaq which makes having both a pointless idea. So, oh well say good bye to that mobile. Also for the same reasons, all the SPV range is not suited to me, as they have no 3g or are too much like my ipaq. I was thinking about getting the M500 and simply swapping my sim card in and out of the Sanyo S750 when I need 3G, but its not practical, so on with the next phone…

Nokia 6280

Next phone is the Nokia 6280. Now I saw this phone when I was browsing around the orange store the other day. And its pretty damm sweet. Most of the things I want are in place, even EDGE/USB2 and high rez screen support. Its odd because I only came across this phone because the sales people in MPC kept telling me that the Nokia N70 has a better screen resoultion than the Nokia 6880 which it does not! So why don't I buy this one? Well theres something about the Series 40 operating system which means it won't run Symbian applications. Which means I'll have to run only Java applications. This is ok, but I would like to have Opera and a decent Jabber client on my phone, instead of relying on my ipaq each time. Also this phone feels like a phone which looks like it will be eclipsed by the Nokia NSeries phones (N71, N80, N90, etc). People who read my blog regularly will know I love the Nokia N90 but can not justify the stupid price which it sells at. I've also been thinking its actually too heavy and I'm not a fan of flip phones. I actually prefer Slide phones like my Sanyo S750. What else puts me off the Nokia 6820? well video recording at QCIF resoultion and only to 3GP format not Mpeg4. Specially when you compare it to the Nokia N80.

Nokia N80

And I'm really warming to the N80 now, even more so that the N90. I mean it seems to have everything I need plus the price seems to be about the same as the Nokia 6280. So it should cost between 50-100 pounds on Orange when it finally comes out. Which looks like March now. However maybe its worth it for wireless on a phone. Certainly if Skype and Wifi become a real alternative as Ben suggests. Either way, the Wifi, universial plug n play (geez I hope you can easily turn it on and off) and the 3 megapix camera all seem to be future proof enough for me. I just need to wait or hope the SPV range adds 3G to its smaller range.

Interestingly Infosync has a run down of the top 5 Orange phones.

Why oh why is there no 3G on this new device? Oh yes I remember, because there only interested in a american audience. EVDO and EDGE versions but no 3G anywhere to be seen. Shame because I would instantly buy this phone. i-mate Jamin

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The Chronicles of Narnia… not the film

A very refreshing change to the usual mainstream rap. The Chronicles of Narnia Rap and its west coast response Narnia rap battle. Slate covers what makes this somewhat interesting. Saturday night live and race aside, rapping about everyday things is hardly new but I've never seen it like this before. I can imagine other videos will be coming online soon.

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BBC Persian filtered out of Iran, what can we do?

When ever the great firewall is mentioned, everyone thinks of China. Even I have to add myself to that list. Interestingly I read a blog on globalvoices (need to find link) which was talking about the fact that filtering happens all over the world and China just happens to be the most high profile one at the moment. One of the things eating up most of my time at work has been the new BBC China site. It has no news content on it at all and it does not link to any news content, which sets its self apart from most of the other 32 language sites we run. This should be acceptable enough to not trigger any alarms on the great firewall china has deployed.

The same certainly does not look true of Iran's firewall which seems to be simply filtering BBC Persian full stop. Hossein Derakhshan has a little about the filtering and i've find some other stuff online. But this is a subset from a much larger email which got sent around

Based on past procedures, the committee in charge of deciding which websites should be filtered has announced a list of sites to the ICT (Information Communication Technology) Ministry to have them blocked and the BBC's Persian news site is one of the sites.

I won't even try and attempt to stake a view on if this is good or bad. But I will say like China information has funny habit of getting around these things. Which leads me on to one of the most interesting moves we've made recently in the Syndication space.

Now for those who do not know I work for the BBC World Service and here comes a disclaimer (thanks Ben). The views stated on this site are mine and are not endorsed by the BBC World Service. Although I am a new media developer for the BBC World Service I am not paid, hoodwinked or coerced into boosting the BBC World Service on this website. Nor does this blog form any part of their marketing strategy. I'm a big fan of Full text syndication but understand why the mainstream media do not use it. So it gives me great pleasure to say that today the Persian feeds were modified to output more content than a little teaser today (the full list is available here). This is not full text, but not your usual one line affair. I have to say its still work in progress and could be changed at any time. But looks like one in a range of innovative solutions for people seeking well written and timely farsi (persian) news content around the world. I would urge anyone who uses the feeds to give us feedback positive and negative. As it might influence what happens in the near future for not only Persian feeds but maybe other language feeds?

Lets hope I still got a job when I go in tomorrow. Although I don't see why not when both the filtering news is online already and the RSS feeds are for public consumption. I won't be suprise if someones already blogged about the change but I've seen nothing yet. Saying that I don't read Farsi.

And at long last some coverage. Iran blocks BBC Persian website on Zeropaid and Boingboing. 2 days after writing this blog post I was worried about the fact I was writing about what we were doing in the BBC World Service about this block. Well besides almost fulltext RSS were now rolling out almost full text daily news email in Persian. So I would say (not the bbc'of course), there's multiple ways around this block. It will be interesting to see if the take up of the Persian RSS and Persian email news will dramaticly increase now there is a block. Humm I wonder if there is anything else we could/should be doing?

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London geekdinner with dave shea last night was fantastic

Dave Shea and Me at the Geekdinner

Ok this feels kind of weird talking about my own successes but honestly last nights geekdinner with dave shea was only one word. Yep, Fantastic! I could not have got a better more friendly crowd of geeks in a bar. Thank you to everyone who came along and made it a great success. I spoke to so many people and I can't remember everyones name. But it does not matter because Flickr will do the work for me. This women had the clever idea to get everyone to put up there pictures using the tag . You can also find pictures using londongeekdinner and geekdinner. If you're a flickr type you can also add your photos to the london geekdinner with shea group pool which I have setup.

Flickr tags go offline?

Ian has got some great pictures from the night and a pretty full transcript of the Question and Answers session with Dave Shea. I'm pretty amazed how fast he was able to put this up and that he got all the audience discussion too. Kudos to you Ian. I hope you don't mind that I stole your picture from the website but I did change the licence to Copyright (all rights reserved) and did give you attribution for such a great picture.

There were a couple of complaints but as Sheila and Jen said, Geeks may have the trait of being perfectionists. So the first thing was the venue. I forgot to say the geekdinner was actually upstairs in the crown and anchor, so thats my own fault. But although the venue was is a whole different class from the Hogs head, the space available was about the same. Sheila commented that my spacial awareness was pretty bad, which would be kind of consistent with what Sarah says too. So as you can guess we quickly ran out of room. I only honestly assumed about 50 people would turn up which is still an increase of about 20% from the last one I did with the simply amazing Molly. I counted with the help of the stickers which I ran out of really quickly (sorry to those who turned up late) exactly 68 people. And I noticed some people turned up really late, Dave Green included. So in total we may have had about 75 people but at one point we had 68 in a venue which should hold a maximum of 60. The bar staff did at one point ask me if I was expecting even more people? I have to say I lied. Because of the huge amount of people, my estimate for food to per head was off and I only got food by nicking it off other peoples plates. Someone told me there were sandwiches, spring rolls, etc. But I didn't see any of it. All I got was Chips and some nice sweet chilli sauce.

To be fair to everyone I have to explain what happened. I look at the signups on geekdinner.co.uk, eventful, dave sheas blog and upcoming. Then work out a rough number of people who are coming and take off about 10-12 people for last minute drop outs. I usually give the kitchen the numbers as late as possible, in this case last week Wednesday. And as luck would have it, a load of people signed up after Thursday night at the girlgeekdinner. Other things which people commented during the night. The one bar person when there was easily enough demand for two, to be fair this changed about 8pm but it was certainly easier to get a drink downstairs and bring it back up. The sound level was loud simply because there were so many people in a small venue, I think Jen Dixon said I was loosing my voice half way through the night. Was the food as good as the hogs head? someone asked. And lastly charging 6 pounds was a stupid idea (thats how much the food costs) because everyone gives me 10 or 5 pounds.

Ok end of complaints, generally I'm going to solve most of the problems by simply moving to a even better venue. Its called the polar bear and is located between Leicester Square and China town. It holds about 150 people max but I will never go for a event which holds more than 80 because it looses its personal and friendly touch when so many people are grouped into a room. Last night although being slighly cramp, the atmosphere was still friendly and fun.

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