London Geek Dinners

Geek Drinks with the O’Reilly Web2Expo Co-Chairs

Cristiano — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 06:59:46 +0000

For those who attended last years Geek Dinner with Brady Forrest, we have some good news: the O’Reilly crew is back in town and offering to hold a little part of their own! They have invited us to come along this Wednesday and have some drinks with them at the myhotel in Bloomsbury. They are even paying for (some) of the drinks! So if you want to learn about the Web2Expo be sure to come along.

Attending are:

Web 2.0 Expo conference co-chairs -
Brady Forrest, O’Reilly Radar
Jen Pahlka, TechWeb (formerly CMP)
Janetti Chon, Community + Content Manager

More info is on upcoming, be sure to RSVP on our own signup site to know that you are coming.

Mini-GeekDinner with Dean Jansen from Miro

Cristiano — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:53:58 +0000

Dean Jansen is in town for a few days, and although a bit short notice, I decided it might be interesting to meet up and have some food/drink in London. For those who don’t know Dean, he’s the Outreach Director for the Participatory Culture Foundation, which develops a free and open source internet TV app called Miro. You might remember Miro from one of our previous GeekDinners when we had Holmes Wilson from Miro as our guest.

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.

Geek Dinner Poll #1

Cristiano — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 19:52:27 +0000

As promised, we are trying out some polls to give the community (a.k.a. you!) some more influence in where the Geek Dinners are going in the future.

The first poll will be about pricing. In the past Geek Dinners have cost amounts from £5 to amounts quite bigger than that, but it is hard to decide on the sweet-spot. So in this first poll I want to hear your opinion. What do you think is fair? (PS: Let me know if any answers are missing)

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

London Girl Geek Coffee 5

mseckington — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:18:33 +0000

After a great coffee last week, we can now announce our next Girl Geek Coffee. A lot of girl geeks have asked for this, so for the first time the coffee will be on a Saturday (7th June). Now all of you have no excuses for not coming!

So where will the next coffee be?

When: Saturday, June 7th, 2008, 2:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Where: Starbucks County Hall near the London Eye [map]
Cost: attending is free, cost for coffee/food will be on a “buy your own” basis
Upcoming: [link]

Please email me at melinda@missgeeky.com to indicate your interest. If you have trouble finding the place or are running late, you can phone me (07521 294 391) or Twitter me directly (mseckington).

Looking Back on the Geek Dinner with Moo (with Photos and Video)

Cristiano — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:00:31 +0000

Looking back at the Geek Dinner of last Thursday, I think we can say it was a success. With 78 signups, of whom 29 had payed in advance, and a show-up total of 72, we couldn’t have wished for a better crowd. The Moo guys (7 of them) were the perfect guests and managed to keep us entertained all night with stories about cards, printing, cows, babies, and drugs.

We personally didn’t take any photos this time, but luckily quite a few other people did (latest flickr photos tagged geekdinner, Adewale’s photos, Craig’s photos). Some other people did some qiking (although not of the full talk). Personally I had set up my video camera and shot 5.5 hours of video from the same corner. This isn’t that interesting, unless you speed it up as I did below.

GeekDinner with Moo Timelapse from Cristiano Betta on Vimeo.
I hope to see you all next time, but for now keep an eye on the blog, as we will be posting some polls one of these days.

London Girl Geek Coffee 4

mseckington — Tue, 20 May 2008 17:46:05 +0000

I’ve been a bit busy lately and didn’t find the time to organize a GGC 2 weeks ago. To make up for that though we’ll have two in the next two weeks! This first one may be a bit short notice, but it will take place in two days time on Thursday. The next one will be the Thursday after that (May 29th), but an official announcement for that will follow.

I’ve decided to change one aspect of the GGC’s: they won’t be “Girls Only” anymore. Instead I want it to follow the same rules of the Girl Geek Dinners: guys are allowed, if accompanied by a girl geek.

So, here are the details for the next coffee:

When: Thursday, May 22nd, 2008, 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Where: Costa in Shaftesbury Avenue
Cost: attending is free, cost for coffee/food will be on a “buy your own” basis
Upcoming: [link]

We’ll be sitting downstairs in the basement. If you have trouble finding the place or are running late, you can phone me (07521 294 391) or Twitter me directly (mseckington).

Please email me at melinda@missgeeky.com to indicate your interest.

London Geekdinner with Moo!

Cristiano — Wed, 14 May 2008 01:40:09 +0000

It has been a while, but we are back with a bang in the middle of the London Web Week. This time we have our friends from Moo.com to enlighten us on everything Moo. Moo mini cards and Moo stickers are real geek accessories so come to talk to the guys who made it happen.

Quite a few changes this time though. First off, we are going to meet up in a very nice Thai restaurant with whom we have been able to arrange a nice variety of food. Costs for food and venue will be £8.

The second change is that Upcoming won’t be our main location for signing up anymore. For multiple reasons we decided to use a custom build event manager, which even allows you to pay in advance. Paying in advanced makes arranging a venue so much more easy for us, so please pay in advanced if you’re sure you want to come. Alternatively we will be at quite a few events before the 29th so you can also pay us on one of those days already.

So go to http://signup.geekdinner.co.uk/event/moo/ to sign up. Don’t forget to mention any special messages like whether or not you’re vegetarian.

When: Thursday, May 29th, 2008, 6:30 PM - 11:00 PM
Where: ThaiSmile Restaurant
Nearest Tube: Holborn
Special Guests: The Moo.com Crew
Cost: 8 pounds for buffet and venue
Upcoming: 671426
Signup: http://signup.geekdinner.co.uk/event/moo/

Looking back at Joint London Girl Geek/Geek dinner with Dr. Sophie Kain

Cristiano — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:30:36 +0000

The latest joined Girl Geek/Geek dinner was a blast. The venue was much better than the last few we used (although slightly warm and lacking natural light and windows). Quite a few people showed up to see Dr. Sophie Kain and to say thanx/goodbye to Ian who is moving to Manchester.

Melinda and I spend the whole afternoon looking for some presents for Ian’s birthday but I think we did well. Nicole made a nice binary cake surprise and a couple of people made a video which I hope to see online sometime soon. For now here are some of the photos.

Big Geek Day Out: Alton Towers

Cristiano — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:59:36 +0000

During the first Geek Meet we got to think about organizing big day out to places outside of London. So, Neil Crosby came up with the idea of a Big Geek Day Out. The first one will be on August 2nd, which is quite far away, but at least you can now mark it down in your agenda already. Here is the plan for now:

Summer’s coming up, you say? And you like Theme Parks? Come and meet us at Alton Towers on the 2nd August then.

More details about possible train deals you can use to get there once the train companies get their acts together and publish this year’s deals. Tickets normally cost £25 for an adult off t’web (plus obviously your cost to get there), but I’m sure that the normal 2 for 1 deals and the like will appear as soon as summer comes along.

This fun day out is open to all (not just geeks). Come one, come all - come to Alton Towers!

When: Saturday, 2nd of August
Where: Alton Towers
Cost: TBA
Upcoming: 495352

Looking Back at Geek Meet #1

Cristiano — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:03:57 +0000

So, Sunday we had the first Geek Meet and it was quite a success for an unorganized, social meetup of geeks. We started out at the Starbucks behind County Hall and after 2 hours of lounging and chatting about Net Neutrality, Flickr Video, and other geek stuff, we headed out for a walk past the Thames.

We had quite a bit of luck with the weather and eventually ended up at a bar near Borough Market where we had some food. We will have another Geek Meet soon, maybe on a Saturday, maybe with a theme. Let us know if you have any ideas.

Below are some of the photos we took.