Tag: relationships

Geeks talk sexy part4: The dynamics of relationships

Chris and Simon

Ed and Alice live together and will soon marry. She decides she’d like more sexual experiences before settling down with the man she loves, so she convinces Ed they should “see other people” (as in, sex with strangers), even as they continue to live together and plan the wedding. They discuss it. Each knows someone who thinks this idea is cool; each has a friend who thinks they’re nuts. Things start reasonably well, but soon their relationship goes awry. Can the genie get back in the bottle and Ed and Alice return to companionship – or does seeing other people put an end to how Alice and Ed used to be?

Geeks talk sexy part 4, kicked off with a edited version of the film, seeing other people. This time it was a slightly lower key affair with a total of about 12 people showing up to find out what the dynamics of relationships meant.

The dynamics of relationships started without the wonderful Samantha Bail (Sam has a university course she needed to spend far more time on, shes ignored it for too long really). We (me and Simon, who has helped out with geeks talk sexy from near the start) weren’t sure if she was the reason for the large turn outs earlier but it was a quieter more intimate event this time, which actually worked out nicely.

Right from the start we asked some very challenging questions about previous relationships and there thoughts about monogamy. We always planned to discuss in the first half about relationships including hacking them. Then in the second half about non-monogamy.

So in the first half, we de-constructed what it means to be in a relationship… At one point we started to project manage a relationship using planner (which is like Microsoft project). Assigning time information to tasks, we were able to see if Agile methodology could be applied to relationships? The idea seems to work quite well but applying the time information was challenging to say the least. For example, there was a question: At what stage do you change your facebook status to say your in a relationship? And do you say in a relationship with person x? On top of that, we explored hacks people use in relationships. Someone suggested sending flowers to the other person, and this was followed up with a discussion of applying this to a cron. Now thats hacking a relationship…!

Up to that point we talked about relationships in a monogamous way. Now we were asking people to think out side the box. In the break we played the 4thought with Clair Lewis.

Clair Lewis from Manchester has two partners, Phoebe and Gordon, and cannot understand why anyone would have a problem with her loving two people at once

After the break and a cocktail later, we were deep in discussion about  the map of non-monogamy. There was plenty to be said… too.

Before long we were on to the special guests (Chris & Simon) who explained how they went from a everyday married couple to become poly. A very interesting tale of love, trust, commitment, compromise and  understanding. Simon said it right when he explained you can love more that one person… You love your parents, your sister/brother, your children, your partner. A relationship isn’t just sex, love takes many different forms.

People later added there own experiences to the mix and before you knew it, we were all questioning our own thoughts about monogamy and would we be able to manage having a non-monogamous long term relationship, and if so which type? I certainly think the Unicorn Polyamory would be high on a lot of men’s lists, but as Louise said… Its called that because its not reality…

Lots to discuss and simply not enough time to discuss it in… It was over the road to Common to continue the conversations till the late hours of Saturday night… The event was a great success, its just a shame we had so few people this time around.

Another great Geeks talk sexy… and maybe the end of our regular scheduled sessions this season. However there’s at least one more, this time a flirt & walk workshop with Nicole from Flirtology and the art of the pickup with our budding pickup artists Simon & Andy. Places are very limited, but expect a grand end to season one…

Continue reading “Geeks talk sexy part4: The dynamics of relationships“

Geeks talk sexy part 4: The dynamics of relationships

Geeks talk sexy 4

Photo credit – virginsuicides

Its that time again… Yes geeks talk sexy time… Sign up here.

In this Geeks talk sexy, we will de-construct what it means to be in a relationship. In a frank, geeky and enlightening way, we will explore the notion of relationships between one person and another. And ask the eternal question – Why should relationships be any different from a complex piece of code?

  • How do you decide your in a relationship?
  • At what date do you pose questions?
  • How do you deal with the differences?
  • What kind of life hacks do you apply to relationships?
  • Can you apply agile methodology to relationships?

Then when you think we’ve gone too deep, we’ll be thinking way outside the box by exploring what its like to have a relationship not based on the concept of monogamy.

This is certainly not for the faint hearted but there’s no doubt its going to be another eye opening geeks talk sexy. Next stop agile relationships…

Its going to be a good one, and look out for part 5 as its not long after. (keep May 7th free if possible) You can also follow the twitter account for geekstalksexy or the subscribe to the official geekstalksexy tumblr blog.

Geek talk sexy part 3: LGBT stand proud

Plastic love

photocredit : bresc

After the overwhelming success of the last geeks talk sexy part 2, we planned to cover LGBT. But there was a certain amount of worry that we were not going to be able to give it the justice that it deserves, simply because neither me, Samantha or Hwayoung were lgbt. Even Simon who joined the team after part 1, was neither. So this was really shooting in the dark for a lot of us.

The fear grew over the coming weeks as the geeks talk sexy got retweeted around. Technicalfault gets a mention here for his crazy amount of retweeting. At some point the event ended up attached as the pre-bollox club event and on the official canal street facebook page. The fear was more about people overrun by people who were expecting a discussion about LGBT generally rather that in the context of geek culture, but we neither have feared it all worked out great and we had our most successful geeks talk sexy to date.

Geeks talk sexy part 3

We started late but setup quickly while quite eager people turned up and started to chat. After a weird rearrangement of the tables (blame Samantha for her double rainbow idea) and a series of questions on the projector. We kicked off with me showing the BBC Three documentary from Dawn Porter goes Lesbian a while ago. While we put the finishing touches to everything you couldn’t help but laugh at some of the things Dawn was saying on the documentary. Its really interesting how attitudes have changed.

We started when our special guest for the evening Ben Light turned up.

At the start the crowd of almost 40 people (best turn out to date by a bit) were a little quiet as we explained like the last one, we want to frame the discussions around geek culture oppose to the wider society. So after the recap we kicked started everything by reading out what peoples answers were to the questions we asked at the very start. Unfortunately I put up a earlier presentation and so the questions weren’t exactly what I was thinking, but we did get a general answer to how do/have you meet partners? Generally it was the same as the male and female answers from part 2, which makes total sense. I was hoping for some slightly different answers but everyone was very sensible with the answers.

Then started a conversation about the term LGBT after admitting I had never heard the term before till a volleyball player told me the Manchester Jump team was LGBT. The debate is pretty much the same one that is on the wikipedia page for LGBT. Some said Gay was a better term and some said Queer was even better still.

After this we got on to the debate over Bisexual relationships. I stuck up a post from the Savage love which was pointed to by quite a few blogs I had seen while doing research. The notion that Bi-sexual people were confused or greedy was quickly crushed by many and the similarities between straight, gay, lesbian, bi, etc relationships were discussed in some detail. I threw in a couple of bombs here and there in the way of the Kinsley scale and Bisexual erasure but everyone was pretty much agreed on most subjects except dating profiles with spelling mistakes.

This cause quite a bit of heated discussion and I would have loved to let it continue but we were already running late and the break was rapidly approaching. Hey and who couldn’t resist the lovely cocktails which were available for a generous donation to madlab.

Geeks talk sexy part 3

Pina Gaylada, L33t Lesbian, Manchester Trans tea and Bigrasm were the order of the day at the cocktail bar. While people tucked into there cocktails, we setup the 1 minute rants section. To be fair we didn’t have many of them but the lies and lack of english on profiles came up again. I had a good old rant back about people getting far too touchy about spelling. Before you knew it we were on to our special guest Ben Light.

Geeks talk sexy part 3

Unforgeable we had some nasty technical problem. Ben used Apple keynote to do is presentation and so we had to use Samanaths MacBook to do the presentation. What followed were a ton of different problems related to the lack of Video memory (who ever says it just works with Apple devices is seriously deluded and should have witnessed the systematic errors Ben and Samantha had to deal with). Anyway in the end, we got it working by reducing the screen resolution down to 800×600 and bouncing back and forth on the PDF instead of the keynote.

Ben focused on LGBT characters in video gaming and it was a fascinating talk (don’t think I’ve ever seen him give a average talk!) Even with the technical difficulties, he was able to show some interesting examples of LGBT characters in popular video games. (I will link to the presentation once Ben posts it to me). The presentation spurred a ton of interesting questions but we had to cut them short because we were running about 40mins late by that point.

After Ben and the Q&A it was a matter of pointing people to common bar as usual. Where conversations continued deep into the night.

I’d like to publicly thank everyone who made it to the event and made it our most popular event to date. Special thanks to Ben Light for the look at the questionable role of LGBT characters in mainstream video games.

Geeks talk sexy part 3

Part 4 is still being resolved but we’re certainly going to delve into the world of Poly relationships in geeks talk sexy part 4: the dynamics of relationships.

Geeks Talk Sexy2: The Other Half of the Population

People in circles

We said geeks talk sexy would be back bigger and better… and it certainly did.

This time we focused on the other half of the population (woman) and the focus paid off greatly.

So to start with, we took on most of the feedback from the first one. One of the critical points was shifting from one subject to another too quickly and losing the crowd as we transitioned around the world of geeks and sex. This time it was much easier to stick to one subject as we digged deeply into the world of what its like to be a geek woman and a geek man in 2011.

The event started like the last one. Cocktails were served as people turned up and chatted in little circles. We played a documentary from Channel4 titled Love Virtually to get people in the mood, while myself and Samantha got setup. The choice of cocktails included the Geek Girl and the Geek Guy.

Geek talk sexy drinks

By the time we got started, the room was nice and full with people sat around a massive communal table. We hadn’t quite got through to our special guest yet but it was on with the show. This time we had a lovely presentation which gave people an idea of where we were going and roughly how far we had gotten through everything.

While Samantha kicked off proceeding with a discussion around peoples experiences with the opposite sex, I was contacting our special guest – the ever transparent Tara Hunt.

We compiled a list of things from the audience of things not do when trying to have a romantic relationship with the other sex.

  • Wear Clothes
  • Don’t Google people (unless you need there contact details)
  • Don’t try living your life by the game
  • Don’t post pictures of you with your ex on a dating site
  • Don’t post old photos (its just creepy seeing people as children)
  • Don’t lie
  • Don’t use text speak
  • Don’t be rude
  • Be Pleasant and polite
  • Don’t be a tool
  • Be polite

We also asked everyone to write down where they have met previous or current boy/girlfriends. We got some, well lets say interesting answers back. (worth noting there all done in secret)

  • When out farming (really?)
  • Online dating (Ok cupid got a mention)
  • By joining clubs and societies
  • Through mutual friends and acquaintances
  • In Bars/Pubs
  • Through work
  • Round the back of Piccadilly station
  • At LARP events
  • At Festivals
  • While drunk
  • Via the Vax mainframe email system at the Polytechnic
  • Cafes (but that person made it clear its not working as they have been single for 4 years)
  • Via Partners (interesting one this one)
  • At Events
  • At Parties including the Christmas Party

Interestingly someone wrote on there piece of paper, “did you want to know about same sex partners too?” This will be picked up in the next month.

By the time we got to the book the game. Things had turned very heated in the room. From memory it seems most the woman had never heard of the game or of the idea of a pickup artist. This of course much debate. One woman declared anyone who has used the game to pickup woman must be some what sad. But at the same time, her partner also raised his hand to say he was aware and may have rustled through the pages of the Game at one point. You can imagine that would be a difficult discussion to have later.

But there was no time for that, it was time for a breather and a refill on the cocktails. While everyone got more drinks, I got everything setup with Tara Hunt on skype. I’m actually surprised it all went really well and she could hear us perfectly well. The only issue was the bandwidth didn’t seem to be there for video but audio was great. As the break ended, it was time for the 60 second rants. And boy we had some juicy ones.

One of the most interesting rants came from Ara who talked about the serious lack of porn for women, something I have to be honest I’ve never really thought about. But she was right, beyond the usual stereotypes there seemed to be not much. Em gave a rant about online dating in general which got me for one going. Chris also added a different perspective covering online dating from a poly perspective. Another one of those things which I’d never really considered. There were of course more, but I never got the chance to give mine which is maybe a good thing.

geek talk sexy2

Listening in to the rants was Tara Hunt on skype and it was time to un-mute her and ask her to explain her story. As she told her story, there were gasps and looks of horror how someone could be so open it hurts when she talked about her relationship and showed the site. It really set in when Tara asked me to show her post titled “5 reasons why I don’t date muggles.” People were able to ask Tara afterwards about her love life and how she copes. I actually wished I’d recorded the whole thing using Skype Recorder because there was some great questions and some even better answers from Tara.

After thanking Tara, it was time for the wrap up and a brief mention about the 3rd part of the series.

Yes in the next one, we’ll be going deep into the LGBT geek scene. Luckily we have help from others who are much more knowledgeable that myself, Samantha or Hwayoung. After the 3rd one, we’re unsure if we should do one more on Poly relationships (which seem quite common in geek culture it seems) and other types of relationships or what. At some point we’re looking to bring London flirt club to Manchester and do some geek speed dating but all will be revealed in the near future.

Generally this event was much better than the last one simply because we had all the elements to keep us focused. Having a Tara as the guest also really helped everyone think about this matter in a much deeper level. Ultimately the discussions continued very into the night at Common Bar afterwards. Everyone had a great time and we look forward to part 3…

What is that stuck in his pint?

Continue reading “Geeks Talk Sexy2: The Other Half of the Population“

Geeks Talk Sexy – The Other Half of the Population

Photo credit: hoyvinmayvin

The description says: Geeks Talk Sexy is back – bigger and better!

And it certainly will be bigger and much better.

So we’re kicking off with part 2 of the sexygeek series. Of course we always planned to do more. But I got a feeling part 2 might shock people because its quite distinct.

This time its all about the female geeks, except instead of the usual discussions about woman and men which we’ve all heard quite a few times. We’ll be digging down into the deep mystery of relationships between the two.

  • How do girl geeks and guy geeks interact in the geek community?
  • What happens when we go from techy hack day to romantic hack date?
  • What are the problems we have to overcome?
  • What can we do to make everyone feel comfortable in their role?

Yes the nitty gritty or you might prefer the nuts and bolts of male and female relationships within the scope of the geek culture.

Most discussions center around woman in the workforce, as entrepreneurs, in places which were along time ago though as only for men. But there is little talk about relationships of men and woman. In actual fact I’m kind of lying. There is quite a lot information but they tend to be buried deep down in places where most of us don’t go looking. So we’re uncovering and discussing it on Friday 4th Feb at Madlab. We may also have a very special guest stopping in, so what you waiting for? Sign up now at our event page.

Disclaimer

Now I have to add the very serious disclaimer because people are going to get very irate about the whole thing.

We are fully aware that this title and concept is only a vague approximation to reality and that gender is not just binary. We are in no way assuming that there are only straight, cis, monogamous, male or female geeks. For the purpose of the talk we picked the most obvious intersection for arising problems, which is the role of women in the geek community that is usually only discussed from a professional point of view.

We hope this decision does not offend anyone (although I got a feeling it will) and that people of all genders and orientations join us for the talk. Please do get in touch if you have got serious concerns.

The whole series

I said in my new years resolutions for 2011, a lot of things regarding Take Geek Culture to new heights. We (me, Samantha and Hwayoung) have worked hard on the series and have some cracking surprises to come. I really hope people bear with us, the first one was great and we learned a lot from that one but it was ultimately very difficult because we tried to cover a load of issues in one overview session. In this one we will stick to one subject, so it will be a lot more tighter. We’re also hoping to have a special guest join us for the event, who that will be will be revealed later. To get you all started, there is this Comfort-a-Crying-Woman

Next in the series we will be exploring Gay, Lesiban, Bi, Poly, Transexual and what ever else there is. I’m happy to say we have some help from Simon Carter who has stepped up to help us better represent section of geeks talk sexy. Me, Samantha and Hwayoung are not that familiar with most of these. So to do them any real justice we certainly need help.

Of course its all about part 2 right now, so what you waiting for? Sign up now!

London Geekdinner Facebook group

Geekdinner london logo

After some minor issues with Facebook networks, I have finally sorted out a global geekdinner group on facebook. You can sign up here or search for geek dinner to find the girl geekdinner group along side the geekdinner group.

As you may have noticed in some of the blog comments else where (Regular Jen) not everyone could sign up to the previous group because I left the default network of London instead of setting it to Global. This was stupid because I even after I knew the problem I couldn't change it. So please makes ure you're signed up to the correct group (the one with the geekdinner logo not the red x).

I do make the joke that everyone is on Facebook but I won't be using Facebook as the official way to tell people about events and news. As Regular Jen points out.

The catch, as I see it, is that you still have to be a member of Facebook to view it. That is not what I would call open… it is open to members of Facebook only. That’s fine and fair and there is no reason to hold back from creating such a group, however, it absolutely divides the followers of London Geek Dinners (and London Girl Geek Dinners). You now have a group within Facebook and ‘the rest of us’

Total agreement and I expect to be using some sort of aggregation to allow good communication between the different spaces. This isn't the first time I've had this problem. It would be very easy for me to stop using our tradional geekdinner blog and setup some group on upcoming and urge people to use that instead but I don't. Instead I prefer the older comment system on the geekdinner blog and then allow sign up on upcoming.org. Ideally I would aggregate the upcoming results via there API back on the geekdinner site but this will all make sense hopefully in the near future.

I want to address something Jen talked about in the same post.

Making something very clear: this isn’t about London Geek Dinners, but the recent LGD Facebook group creation solidified a feeling I already had forming in my subconscious about Facebook dividing people. I posted about Facebook last week. I caved to social pressures and joined the service. I wish I hadn’t. I have only me to blame for that (well, and Facebook. Bastards. /images/emoticons/happy.gif.
What I hope I’ve brought forward more than anything is that every time a link is posted to a page within Facebook to the world outside of Facebook, that link (and its poster) excludes people. The ‘welcome’ page non-members get is a stark, uninviting login screen with no other content— it’s the equivalent of a giant, muscly body guard outside an exclusive club’s door. You aren’t welcome to the content within the Facebook walls unless you give up something in return, and in this case, it’s your data. Forever. I have never felt so unwelcome on a site. Even without the information brought to light by the video I linked to in another post, I felt this way.

This is not the way to start or nurture relationships. It’s high-level data mining wearing a social network cloak and at the same time subtly creates social outcasts out of the ones who want nothing to do with it.

I joined it and now I can never truly leave. Sounds dramatic, but Rachel called Facebook a new Hotel California. She’s right you know

 

 

 

I hate social networks for the sake of social networking, this includes Facebook. Facebook is the new roach motel as one of the gilmor gang use to say. I like Jen resisted till the bitter end but once they included a developer API and I started to see some applications being built I signed up.

I heard rumors that the facebook guys didn't sell to Yahoo because they are working on a operating system or something. Well currently you can certainly see how once your in facebook it would be easy to ignore most of the net if your thinking that way already. Its like the portals of the late 90's but with social networking layed through-out it. This may be all good for most people and at this very moment just about bearable for me too. I still can't find a way to put my blog rss into my facebook profile for example and I'm a sucker for owning my own data.

I think Facebook is almost unstoppable without some radical game changing from someone else. I'm hoping that other thing is open and decentralised (the first person to make the concept of FOAF work or the concept of FOAF work will bite a huge chunk out of Facebook) and puts a end to facebook but till then i'm forced to use it because thats where the attention and people are right now. Sad but true.

Please note I haven't mentioned Plaxo 3.0 or Plaxo Pulse which I'm sure will come up when I decide to do a post about lifestreams.

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Gabriel and Dresden Featuring Molly Bancroft – Let Go

I've been listening to this tune a little too much I think. This is certainly the trance equivalent of a breaking up tune. Its very mellow and limited on vocals, but clear and effective at reminding me of current position.

 

I swear I don’t know, what time it is,
But I know this means, nothing much to me,
And I hear the voices, bring in my head,
And they keep telling, telling me to let go…
Let Go
Telling me to let go
Let go…
*It could be better that way*

Let it Go, Let it go,
*It could be better that way*
Let it Go, Let it go,
*It’s just better that way*
Let it Go, Let it go,
*It could be better that way*
Let it Go, Let it go,
It’s just better that way.

And I hear the voices, bring in my head,
And they keep telling,
Telling me to Let Go…To let go…
Telling me to Let Go…To let go…
Telling me to Let Go…To let go…
Telling me to Let Go…To let go…

*Aah a ah..let it go..*
*Aah a ah..let it go..*
*Aah a ah..let it go..*
*Aah a ah..let it go..*
*Sink me better that way.*

Let it go, Let it go
“It could be better that way”
Let it Go, Let it go
“It’s just better that way”
Let it Go, Let it go
“It could be better that way”
Let it Go, Let it go
*Sink me better that way..*
Let it Go, Let it go
*It could be better that way*
Let it Go, Let it go
*It’s just better that way*
Let it Go, Let it go
*It could be better that way*
Let it Go, Let it go
*It’s just better that way*

Scary how effective music can be sometimes…

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Breaking up is hard to do


Picture from our recent holiday in New York

Sarah and I are both announcing today on our blogs that we are going to get divorced after four and a half years of marriage.  This was a joint decision, and it wasn't made hastily.  We have tried many different things to make it work, but have come to the conclusion that staying married will cause a lot of unhappiness for both of us.  We would rather end it now while were still on good terms, and plan to stay friendly.

We know this is pretty public and quite shocking news for many people who know me. We hope that everyone will accept that we know what is best for us, and give us our privacy about the reasons.  We are both sad and under a lot of stress, but are also somewhat relieved to have made the right decision.
 
A lot of people were also surprised about the speed at which we got married in the first place.  We didn't take that step lightly, and neither of us regrets getting married.  We did believe at the time we would be married forever, and we do still love each other.  The problems we have do not have anything to do with the manner in which we met or the speed of our marriage.

We both admire and respect each other and hope that our mutual friends will never feel that they have to choose sides.  At some point, we may even continue the podcast, but it is undecided at this time.  We consider ourselves 'separated' now, but will continue to live in the same house until we can sell the property or make alternative arrangements.

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