London Girl Geekdinner – Excellent times, great people and good work Katy and Sarah. You can read more here and here. Just a shame I missed most of it.
London girl geek dinner with Cory Doctorow
Tag: geekdinner
Geek dinner with Paul Boag
Another successful and great Geekdinner, this time with Paul Boag from the Boagworld design podcast. This time around I decided to try a local designer doing good stuff for the community. PaulBoag fitted the bill perfectly since I've been listening to his podcast for a while now. Around 30 people showed up and enjoyed the evening with Paul. Now this may seem small compared to the 70 of Dave Shea but its not far off Tim O'Reilly and Molly type attendance. What I found interesting is the percentage of new faces and regulars. It always seems to stay around the same percentage no matter what guest. I've not worked out if this is good or bad yet but we'll see at the next one I guess. Something else which did change this time was the percentage of women. It went down this time which is a shame but I know quite a few women who simply couldn't make it this time.
So as usual people turned up before even I got there which is always a suprise. Paul and Marcus turned up just after myself which was about 18:30 ish. Between 19:20 and 19:45 the bulk of the people came which is usual. And before you knew it the food was being handed out. This was great because usually people ask me when the foods coming and I usually have to say soon, honestly soon. But this time it was so early that it even took me by suprise. I had not even collected the money and given out sticky name tags yet. So I'm glad to say that the Polar Bear will be come the home of Geekdinner unless they have it booked for other events (they have June booked out for the World Cup or something). Its big enough for 100 people and we have complete control over music, noise and the lighting. There's a complete DJ and Mic setup so its possible to record talks and even finally broadcast the speakers talking to the whole room without the speaker shouting out loud and loosing there voice.
But back to the night, by the time everyone had a chance to get there food and digested I had introduced Paul and we were away. Paul's talk was mainly a public reply to Molly's post How to sniff out a Rotten Standardista. I won't recite much of what Paul said but it was pretty funny in parts and it was recorded by Marcus and another person (can't remember your name sorry). I know the Boagworld is planning a special podcast with the recordings they made, so I'm hoping to be linking to the podcast soon enoughPodcast. But after talking about Molly's post and the fact that we look inside of the design community too much, Paul started on Web 2.0. He was convinced its all smells too much like a bubble. Before long Paul was being beaten to death with questions and comments. In the end, Paul had to give in and make it clear that something like Digg.com smells like a Bubble type site while Flickr before it was bought was not because they at least had a business plan. Honestly Paul was great, he really took it all on the chin and was glad to admit he might have changed his mind a little. Paul also gave a nice talk about how we and the pros are actually making it up as they go along. If we were more honest about this things might actually be better overall. So without spilling any more tasty beans, I got to say Paul was fantastic and Marcus was great too (i can't believe his arm never fell asleep. holding the mic for almost a hour I believe?) I actually closed my eyes at one point and seriously it sounded like the batter of a usual Boagworld podcast. Great stuff and thanks again to Paul and Marcus for making the trip up to London and taking part in a great Geekdinner.
For those who don't know there was a special competition which included a trip to Austin Texas to the South by South East interactive conference (SXSW). Not only did the jammy winner get tickets to the conference but he also got his hotel paid for and flights paid for by the little bit of sponsership which sits on Geekdinner.co.uk now. The names were pulled out of my grey hat by Paul Boag and Simon won, much to the disappointment of everyone else who entered. Kinda of wish I could have entered myself really too. Simon's already offered to fly the London Geekdinner flag for us and plans to meetup with a couple of people who have already booked there tickets to go. Good luck Simon, have a great time!
I spoke to so many people during the rest of the evening but I would like to say thanks to everyone for coming and making it a great geekdinner. It was less people but it was nice and friendly and there was plenty of food to go around for all. Oh by the way Jen and other vegatarians, the polar bear serves food on single plates so the meat is easily avoidable. Tom asked me if it was ok for a Vegan and I couldn't honestly say yes, but I believe even he was able to find something good and safe to eat. Another reason to stay at the polar bear I guess? Whatever it is, there is a flickr group I set up here and my own photos tagged geekdinnerwithboag here. Can't wait to arrange the next one now.
Oh by the way Simon that lucky guy and Rachel have a good review of the evening too.
SXSW interactive competition, updated
Taken from the geekdinner website.
We are please to tell ya’ll we have joined forces with the lovely folks @ SXSW Interative to give one lucky Geek Dinner attendee a free SXSW Interactive ticket.
To be in with a chance of winning this amazing prize, in the spirit of the Podcast Geek Dinner on February 23rd, please SMS the word “Podcast” followed by your Name, URL, Email, and Location to 60300.
The lucky winner will be announced by Paul Boag at the February 23rd Geek Dinner. You need to attend to win, if your the winner and did not attend, another name with be drawn from Ian’s Hat!
p.s. standard sms charges apply [this is not a premium rate shortcode!]. no terms and conditions. you win, you get the ticket.So get txting, and good luck
The thing which has been putting people off is the flights and hotel prices. But its no longer a worry.
Thanks, now, to our buddies at Shopzilla this SXSWi ticket now comes with a return flight, and hotel. Sweet!
Lee was able to get the flights and hotel also sorted for the one lucky winner. So in totally were talking a prize of about 1000+ pounds! Its such a good deal that honestly even I'm tempted to enter but know I can't really. Imagine if I won, people would spam this blog forever with fix. Anyhow, I would enter if you can because right now there is a 1 in about 35 chance that you will win the ticket. Thats fantastic odds and even if you don't win you still get a great night out next Thursday with Paul Boag and the rest of the geeks. Like Lee says, good luck and hope to be pulling your name out of my magic hat.
The next geekdinner will be with 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.
London geekdinner with dave shea last night was fantastic
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 londongeekdinner with shea. 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.
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.
Enjoying last nights London Girl Geek Dinner
How would I describe the girl geekdinner> The right people in a fun friendly atmosphere. Shaking off the need to go huge Sarah Blow's London girl geekdinner is a great place for women geeks together and not feel the intense pressure of being the only women in a busy room with no one they know. Thursday's 3rd girl geekdinner was a sit down affair around a very long table but people moved around before and after the dinner which made it possible to talk to anyone. The amount of men at the dinner has seemed to have increased quite a bit since the last one (including myself of course). But talking to Sarah Blow she takes this as a positive sign that men are convincing there partners and friends that they should go along and also invite them. Which is a good thing because we all know geekdinners are a nice place to be and not scary at all. The hope is that maybe some of the women will feel the urge to try out other geekdinners, mobile mondays, London events, etc and girl geekdinner will be less needed in the future. Sheila suggested that she will be 93 before there is a balance of genders at events like a geekdinner, and I kind of agree but things are getting better everytime. Looking at the sign up list for the next geekdinner which is now only 4 days off, I'm seeing double figures for women geeks signing up. Maybe in a few months we can get closer to 20 percent? Who knows. Anyhow back to the dinner…
By the time I got there (say 1945) the main table was already pretty much full. We had to drag more tables to add towards the end of the main table, which gives you a idea of how many people turned up for the dinner. Right from the start there seemed to be quite a few guys which was suprising after browsing through the pictures of the last event. Sheila invited me along which I'm very thankful for when Sarah could not make it. So I for one certainly stuck to the rules. Not that I'm suggesting others didn't of course. Before long I noticed Ben and Sofia had also turned up which Ben never mentioned he was planning, and before you know its the end of the table was away. I can not even remember everyone who I spoke to but I know Imp must have slipped off into the night before I could catch her after dinner. Sorry getting ahead of myself again. So before you know it was time for dinner and honestly it was better that the scoble dinners. The texas embassy serves lets say not the greatest food I've tasted generally. But I was there for the conversation and people so was not disappointed. Just after dinner came the open mic section. I was interested in how this would work because I'm considering doing the same thing for months when I can not get a good guest for the geekdinners. You most of the time the most interesting people in the room are not the guests, no dis-respect to any of my guests but you know what I mean? and I will stop digging my hole now.
The open mic started with a bit of a lecture and moved to Bill Thompson who was OK and short. But the highlights were Sarah Blow and Jen Dixon. Jen Dixon I've been tracking recently after her comment asking if there would be a food which a vegetarian could eat at my geekdinner? I've still not got a solid answer but I'm hoping to speak to the chef today and get a final answer. Anyhow Jen is really interesting because her story is almost a match for Sarah's story. Its so weird because even Jen is from the same area in America. She met her husband whos from Wales (near Bristol) online via a webcam technology. And there's more which I'm sure to find out on Monday.
So generally, the london girl geekdinner was a great night and I would highly recommend it as any women's first steps into getting into the London geek scene. I know theres been a bit of talk about the different geekdinners but honestly I'm with Sarah on this one. I will keep the geekdinners I do small enough so you can talk to everyone in a relaxed setting. Its about the quality not the quantity of people. I'm also happy to help Sarah out with the girl geekdinners if shes ever stuck and I'm sure she would do the same.
I've uploaded my pictures in the usual place on Flickr, I'm sure others will do the same soon, till then here's a search which will get to the right photos
Weird seeing my name in NTK still
This months Event queue in NTK has this block of text
…Negotiations are afoot to snag one or more of them for another London GEEK DINNER, though in the meantime Ian Forrester is trying out a slightly more upmarket venue for January’s soiree with DAVE “CSS Zen Garden” SHEA (7pm, Mon 2006-01-23, The Crown and Anchor, 22 Neal St, London WC2H 9PS, UKP6 for buffet). And for anyone who considers an evening discussing web standards “not quite geeky enough”…
Its still kind of weird although its happened a couple of times now. Cheers Dave for the heads up. I must have missed it because NTK does not do full text RSS still. Yeah I know some of the reasons why, but come on… come on make it happen.
Anyway I wanted to also say before going to bed early tonight (3am) do get your name on geekdinner.co.uk or Eventful. I’m actually wondering if we will break the maximum capacity of 70 people with this geekdinner. I have the option of moving the venue to the polar bear near Leicester Square if we do go over 70 people. Oh and one more thing, if your around in London and not doing much before the geekdinner, be sure to check out Dave Shea’s plans to go around the Tate modern with a few geeks. I would go myself, but I have to work till after 5pm, before hot trotting it to the Geekdinner to put up signs and sort out name badges. Yep name badges are back, be afraid…no..be very afraid… *smile*
I’ve been thinking, I should share some of the so called secrets to the geekdinners and events I’ve done so far. I’m not one of those people seeking to be a A-class blogger and am more of a sharer than holder
So first things, about a year ago I was going to events which honestly I felt could be done better. So I did. How do I get the guests which I do? Well in my own experience its friends of friends and keeping an eye on guests blogs. See if you see someones in town for a short period, its a good idea to write them a nice email asking if they would be interested in taking part in your event. I always see these emails as the start of a conversation and maybe a way to plan something next time around. Hey and theres nothing wrong with a good conversation with a good person. Oh yeah and its worth pointing out that I’m quite picky with the guests. I’m tending to lean towards people who are geeky but are interesting. Molly was the perfect guest, but Dave could be better still.
How do I sort out the money? Well I tend to have events during the week which means you can get a venue for almost free, but you need to pay for the food. Most places do buffet type food and charge anything between 1 pound and 30 pounds a head. I tend to prefer the lower end of the scale because to be honest, you can get a ok resturant meal in London for 15 pounds per head. So why would you pay so much for a buffet? I also only charge as much as the buffet costs and wait as long as possible before giving a exact figure for people eating. How do I know how many people there will be? Well I usually count how many unique comments the geekdinner blog gets, then take away about 15 people for people who may not turn up. I also check out other Eventful, Upcoming and Delicious to see how many people have added it or suggested they will be going. Then obviously I look around Google, Technorati and Blogdiggers Blog searchs to see if there is buzz for the geekdinner and see if I’ve missed anyone, A combination of these things usually works for me. This also means the money I get on the door goes straight back on the food and venue. Worst comes to worst I will only loose about a bit of money.
Whats the deal with other geekdinners? Well I dont own geekdinner.co.uk, actually Lee Wilkins does and he still does geekdinners but has taken a break for a while. Hugh Macleod does other ones in London like the large Robert Scoble ones and there maybe others but there not very public and happen on a adhoc base. There are geekdinners outsides of London for example Tom Simcox is planning one for Newcastle or somewhere in the North East of England. And finally there is nothing stopping you from setting up your own and doing a better job that I am doing right now. If that happens, expect to see me there sipping Redbull and Hot Sauce (my new drink of choice).
But I will keep evolving geekdinner as much as I can, talking of which dont forget to check out my two pledges which take Geekdinner in a different direction. Geekdinner nye2006 and Geekcamp
London Geekdinner with Dave Shea on the 23rd Jan
Yep the first geekdinner of this year is with the wildly influential Web designer Dave Shea.
Dave Shea is the cultivator of css Zen Garden.com, a long running member of the web standards project, and runs the very successful Bright Creative. A graphic designer by trade, he writes about all things web for his daily weblog, mezzoblue.com
For more information about Dave check out his information page.
The details you need for this geek dinner is has follows…
When: Monday 23rd January 2006
Where: The Crown and Anchor, Covent Garden – 22, Neal St, London, WC2H 9PS
Nearest Underground: Covert Garden Tube
Time: 19:00 – 23:00
Special Guest: Dave Shea
Cost: £6 for buffet food [payable on the door]
Regulars geeks will noticed the change of venue from the Hogs Head to the Crown and Anchor. I've also had to up the price because the food is going to be better and the venue much quieter and more intimate. I've already posted the event to Eventful and in turn Upcoming now they have that interop working (time is not quite right however, its my own mistake). Expect a posting on the official Geekdinner.co.uk site really soon There is post on geekdinner.co.uk. And dont forget to check out my pledges for newyears and a geekcamp.
Geek events I’m planning
I've been thinking about geek events and geek culture recently quite a lot. I'm a self described geek enjoy being around other geeks. And it seems I'm not the only one. I was flicking through my tagged for reading later
entries in Great news today and came across a entry by Molly where she was talking about geekcruises. I thought it was more a joke than anything, but I was wrong. I did a look around the site and even did a few pricings for myself and Sarah. The prices are well, lets say out of my price range for right now. 3000 dollars seems to be a rough medium. But someone must be paying it and actually really enjoying it, and that proves there is a market.
So anyway enough of the talk, now its time for me to put my time and effort where my mind is…
Pledge number 1 – geekdinner nye2006
I will setup and run a geekdinner on new years 2006/07 but only if 100 other self described geeks will help out and/or commit to going to the geekdinner.
Believe it or not but you can text pledge geeknye2006 to 60022 if you live in England or Wales.
Pledge number 2 – geekcamp
I will setup and help run a geekcamp somewhere in Europe but only if 30 other self described geeks will join me and/or help out.
And yes again, you can text pledge geekcamp to 60022 if you live in England or Wales.
Although, I'm certain one of the events will go down better than another one (will reveal some other time, if you couldnt guess). I'm really getting a good feeling that this is a good time to arrange such events. Some one asked Slashdot the question Have Geeks Gone Mainstream?
Recently, I've been seeing more and more news stories about how 'geek' has gone mainstream. There have been a slew of articles with titles like Geek Pride and Geek Chic, which discuss how movies like 'The 40-Year Old Virgin' and 'Napoleon Dynamite', as well as television shows like 'Beauty and the Geek' have made it cool to be a geek. Two pinup calendars of geeks have been released this year, taking advantage of the new mainstream interest in all things geeky. These include the Geek Gorgeous Calendar, which features women who work in the hi-tech industry, and the Girls of Geekdom Calendar, which includes geeks like 'Art Geek' and 'Movie Geek'. So if being a geek has really become cool, why has interest in CS as a major dropped among incoming freshmen and women are still a minority in computer and engineering fields? Is it cooler to pretend to be a geek (wear 'Save Pedro' shirts, etc.) than to really be one?
When anonymous asks about CS, he/she's refering to Computer Science which I think is a major mistake. Being a geek does not mean your from a Computer Science background. Like I always say, some of the most geeky people I know are designer, music makers, etc. But the point is taken about the mainstream aspect of it. Sarah uses the term Geek hag quite a bit and I can certainly see how it could be applied.
Geekdinner with Scoble and Dotben
So the first Geekdinner I've been to which was on a weekend was great fun. The conversations I had were fantastic through-out the night. I met some great new people and spent a lot with Sheila chatting away about life, XML and the universe. So odd meeting someone so on your level its actually pretty spooky.
The Geekdinner should have been renamed the Geekdinner with Ben Metcalfe and Robert Scoble, Z list meets A list but it works out ok this time.
Anyhow, so it was great catching up with Scoble again. He obviously didnt remember who I was at first but he actually did remember after a couple of seconds once I mentioned RSS and working for the BBC World Service. Can I also say did anyone get a picture of Scoble doing a flaming shot at that champagne bar we all went to afterwards?
So this is how the night went. I got to the Texas Embassy about 6:30pm, after finding somewhere just around the corner to park. I was hoping to get my hair cut but it never quite happened due to Saturday football crowds through Charlton, I must remember that next time.
I was at the bar and heard a couple of guys talking about Google Books and it actually turned out to be one of the guys behind Searchengine Watch. I also got talking with a student of Computer Science from De montfort. I and he was concerned that his course was not teaching anything about webservices, internet conectivity or even modern developent methods. And actually I got speaking to another student who had the same problems. Geez no wonder a lot of computer science students have such closed minds to such things?
Moving on. I'll drop out the conversations I had for now, as I want to elaborate on quite a few of them.
So after dinner which was the usual Tex-Mex type thing, Robert and Hugh did a little speech and actually opened it up to the crowd of about 150. The rest of the time was spent talking and drinking. By the time we got thrown out of the Embassy, the plan was hatched to head up to a Champagne Bar in Soho and Microsoft paid for us all. Yeah expensive champagne for about 30+ people, cheers Microsoft. After about a hour or so, we were being kicked out again. So Me, Sheila and Shahid from google ended up at a coffee bar in Soho and geeked about XML and related technologies. Its so great talking out loud about this stuff. XML will rule the world…
There's a Flickr pool for fun photos from the night.
So about those conversations.
Well he's a few I remember, this is good for my own memory as well as it might be of interest to others.
Talking to imp, she told me there was a problem with trackbacks on the BBC creative archive site and even on my own. I assured her that Trackbacks do work on cubicgarden (I get enough spam to know this for sure) but honestly I've never seen any from Haloscan.
I met Tim from dotnetsolutions, he's one of the guys from http://www.DHTMLcentral.com. It was quite late but from what I can gather there doing lots of Ajax type stuff now and leaning on there DHTML past to do creative and useable things. I've not really looked at that site for about 6/7 years but I do remember going there for scripts when Netscape 4.x just came out. That was also the days when I never use to think about cross-browser scripts and web standards. Gald things have changed for the better.
Trying to explain to Sheila what OPML was without any tools except handwaving while walking up a packed Saturday night charing cross road. Chris from Microsoft seemed to think it was a great standard, while I was trying to explain its not really a standard just happen to be the default way to share Blogrolls and subscriptions. I was going to mention XBEL and XOXO but never quite got around to it. I also noticed Uche has wrote a few XSL's to convert between OPML and XBEL and XOXO.
A brief talk and handshake with Dan Gillmor who of course wrote the hughly successful We the Media. I should have talked longer but I was just coming back from the toilet and caught him while he was making a move to leave it would seem. I know the Global voice's people were at the geekdinner but I didnt really get a chance to talk to anyone except Lucy Hoberman (BBC Creative R and D) before we went to the champagne bar and met Nicole. Nicole is a german woman who podcasts and blogs in German and English. We had a very interesting perspective talk about the differences and how your percived when writing and talking in another language online.
Spent quite a bit of time talking to Kosso and Dr Jo Twist about various things.