Thanks to everyone who turned up and made the Geek Dinner with Molly the best yet
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Everything went so well I'm actually still up with a big smile on my face, but am speechless in what to write at this moment. I'll fill in the details tomorrow. Till then you can catch all my photos here on Flickr. And all public ones here and here. Interestly, I'd not seen the Tim O'reilly geek dinner photos till now.
Ok so some observerations from yesterday
No matter how early I get to the venue someone will beat you. Even a full 45mins before the start of the Geek dinner with Molly, there were about a group of 8 guys drinking and chatting. The group included Don from Amazon.
Name badges are a good idea. Some people liked the idea of the sticky badges, others didnt. But it was great for me as I can now look through the photos and remember everyone name (for example Elly). But it doesnt stop there, it helps me go and speak to everyone at least once.
I need to rotate round more. There were some people who I spent a bit of time with and then there was Sheila, who I swear I spent about half the night talking to. We had some quite amazing and open conversations about being geek, relationships and a ton of other stuff. Fantastic but not ideal when your the host. Next time Sheila, I'm going to have to pass on my contact details so we can chat over email or something.
Find a venue where you can control the noise level. It was hard work for Molly and Andy shouting over the hogs heads background noise. But next time, we will be in a different venue. Imp also offered me a mini PA system if I need it next time.
Talking of Improbulus, I had a couple of interesting conversations with her about privicy and security online. I used my audioscrobbler experience as a example. When audioscrobbler first came online, I thought its cool but do I really want everyone knowing what I listen to? At the time it was a no. But I've come to realise that if you dont realese the information yourself with a little bit of control, someone other company will do it for you, and you will have even less control. Imp disagreed, which is fine and I like think shes right, but in my experience the opposite is true. Its just more amount of how much your willing to pay for your privacy and if its more than the next company. I remember quickly reading some advice to newbies online guff guide, and they were recommending that you do not let online sites store your card number because usually its store in a database with little or no security. Once again in my experience this has been true.
Imp's post also reminded me of a conversation which me, her and Shelia had about taxonomies and folksonmies. I couldnt go into details at the time because I really needed to circlate around and give out sticky labels for names badges. But trust me, Imp and Shelia were not done yet and I'm looking forward to talking about it more next time. Hey if you guys are up for it, we could do it at the scoble geek dinner?
Anyhow back to the geekdinner…
Fatbusinessman has created a group photo pool for Molly's Geekdinner. Should have thought about doing the same myself, good call Fatbusinessman.
More observations.
I should pick less technical people to do the dinners for. I got a feeling Molly being a designer really opened up the geekdinner to a range of people who may not have gone if it was Tim O'Reilly. Nothing against Tim or Scoble, but I'm thinking its best if I leave Hugh to do that category of people and I should focus on people like Molly. I mean we had many developers as usual, but also quite a few designers and even a librarian and architect. Everyone was fully at ease to express there geeky nature. And there's nothing better than hearing another person express there passion for something which the mainstream of people would see as kind of weird. I wont go into my post about being a self described geek but its quite interesting and quite relavent.
I'm sure I've seen you before? I must have said that too many times yesterday, I'm going to have to think of someother way to say the same thing. But I did finally meet Rachel Clarke and I was actually right, I had meet her before but at a different Geekdinner. I also met Pixel Diva (love the site design by the way) again, its been such a long time that I forgot what she looked like, but I knew I had seen her before. I seem to never forget faces, just names. Once I heard her voice and that strong accent, it all came back.
This was the last Geekdinner for this year by myself, but dont worry I'll be back in the new year with a new venue and more interesting guests. Don't forget Hugh's arranging the big christmas geek dinner with Robert Scoble which I'll be attending in the usual London tech lovey fashion. If your woman with a partner the girl geek dinner is well worth checking out.
If you are male and wish to attend this event you must bring a female with you or be brought by a female. NO FEMALE NO ENTRY!
Which I personally feel is fine because these events are usually over run with men and this is a good way to achive some balance. I have not quite convinced Sarah that we should go, but I'm working on it. If anyone of the beautiful woman I met yesterday have no partner to bring with them, please drop me a email.
I've just learned that there is also a Molly podcast which I guess the interview was about. Its titled the worst podcast ever because of some podcast disaster with a Sony Minidisc recorder. Interesting Hugh's comments about the BBC…
If this was the BBC, I would just cover my tracks, cut out a few seconds, and tell my boss that I grabbed a great clip of Molly. But in the spirit of podcasting, I let the tape run out in mid sentence.