David G.W. Birch is a Director of Consult Hyperion, a global IT management consultancy that specialises in electronic transactions,. Before helping to found Consult Hyperion in 1986, he spent several years working as a consultant in Europe, the Far East and North America. Described by The Independent as a ‘grade-A geek’, and by the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation as ‘one of the most user-friendly of the UK’s uber-techies’; he is well-known for his “Second Sight” columns in The Guardian’s Online supplement.

Dave will talking about Consult Hyperion’s work on M-Pesa. (Featured on the BBC and all good news outlets.) The M-Pesa payments service is used by 17% of Kenyans [5.5m users], with over 10,000 signing up every day. Despite objections by mainstream Kenyan banks, M-Pesa’s growth not only avoided regulatory issues, but helped trigger legal reforms to open Kenya’s money transfer market.

Dinner will be upstairs at the Holborn Hummus Bros in Holborn at 6:30PM. It’s buy your own dinner (about £15 a head) and book early as it’s not a large venue! To let us know that you’re coming and reserve your ticket, email me at mseckington@gmail.com.

We’re going to be in our usual place again, Hummus Brothers in Holborn (first floor) and we’ll commence at about 6:30PM. be sure to join us and please let us know if you’re coming on our signup page.

This time our guest will be Adrian Hon, Chief Creative Officer at Six to Start. He is one of the main designers and producers behind Perplex City, the world’s first commercially successful ARG (Alternate Reality Game) and has since then been at the forefront of ARG development. This time though Adrian will give us a talk on “The Death of Reading”. 

Again the venue will be our regular Hummus Bros in Holborn at 18:30, with the talk starting between 19:30-20:00. Food will be on a get your own basis, so no need to pay online. If you’re running late and can’t find us at the Holborn place anymore, we’ve probably moved on to the pub down the street.

When: Wednesday, December 10th 2008 18:30
Where: Hummus Bros in Holborn
Speaker: Adrian Hon from Six to Start
Topic: The Death of Reading
Cost: Food and drinks on buy your own basis

Please RSVP on our signup site if you are coming, there is only limited seating.

Joining us is James Gardner, the Head of Innovation and Research at Lloyds TSB. He will talk a bit about the book he has got coming out soon and tell us some amusing anecdotes about medieval banking datacentres and internal bureaucracy. 

Because we are hosting this together with the OpenFinanceCoffeeClub, the number of places will be split evenly between the two. This means 15 spots available for GeekDinner people, 15 for OpenFinanceCoffeeClub members.

Again the venue will be our regular Hummus Bros in Holborn at 18:30. Food will be on a get your own basis, so no need to pay online. If you’re running late and can’t find us at the Holborn place anymore, we’ve probably moved on to the pub down the street.

When:  Tuesday, November 18th 2008 18:30
Where: Hummus Bros in Holborn
Speaker: James Gardner
Cost: Food and drinks on buy your own basis

Please RSVP on our signup site if you are coming, there is only limited seating.

Joining us will be Kevin Marks who is author of the weblog Epeus Epigone and a software engineer at Google. He became principal engineer for Technorati after doing work for both Apple and the BBC. He is one of the founders of Microformats. In 2003, Marks was an early experimenter with and contributor to the technologies that became popular under the names podcasting and iPodder in 2004.

The venue will be our regular Hummus place in Holborn and the time will be from 7pm till late. Food will be on a get your own basis, so no need to pay online. If you run late and can’t find us at the Holborn place anymore, we’re probably moved on to the pub down the street.

Please RSVP on our signup site if you are coming, there is only limited seating.

Thank you TechSmith!

Special thanks also go out to Ian Smith who got us in contact with Betsy in the first place. Afterwards we all went to the ThaiSmile pub and had some drinks until we eventually got kicked out. 

Keep an eye on the blog for more mini-GeekDinner events as I think they are a the perfect “little brother” to the normal Geek Dinners.

Betsy Weber from TechSmith is in town for a few days, and she was very interested in meeting up and having some food/drink with the London geeks. For those who don’t know who Betsy is, she is the Chief Evangelist at TechSmith, who make some of the best screencasting software like Camstasia for Windows (and soon Mac too).

The event will be a mini-geekdinner, which means it’s a get-your-own-foods-and-drinks meetup. We will be meeting up at Hummus Bros Holborn, Wednesday September 3rd, at about 6:30pm.

Please be sure to RSVP on our signup page that you are coming, as I will probably be reserving a table.

The event will be a mini-geekdinner, which means it’s a get your own foods and drinks meetup. We will be meeting up at Hummus Bros Soho, Tuesday June 17th, at about 6:30.

Please be sure to RSVP on our signup page that you are coming, as I will probably be reserving a table. More details are on upcoming.

PS: Additionally you might be interested to know that Dean Jansen was one of the team members of ROFLcon this year.