A Consuming Experience

Another geek dinner, so soon after the second London Geek Girl Dinner, whew… But it was with Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Networks, and I was free, so I thought I'd go along to my first geek dinner that wasn't a girl geek one, having seen mention of it on the Geek Dinner page and Geek Dinner wiki. The Hog's Head pub is nice and central with plenty of buses serving the area, which was lucky given the Northern Line shutdown. It was £1 each for some finger food but I missed most of it as I was in the corner when the plates were being passed round, so I ended up having to pick at some chips, that's fries to you Americans, during the talk (though I did manage to bag one scotch egg, thanks Dave!).

People were pretty friendly - I didn't do a count but I guess there were about 30 there, but only 3 women (maybe 4?). I don't know where all the women who went to the geek girl dinners were! I chatted with Josette and Lianne (hope I've spelt that right?), and saw Suw again too. But there were boys aplenty, many from the BBC (presumably because the organiser Ian Forrester is at the BBC). I didn't catch all their names but I met Michael, Edward, Ian of course, Sherwin, Henrik, Andre who videoed Tim's talk, Colin, and Copyfighter Dave (again), as well as Tim briefly.

His talk was interesting but it was so noisy (people in the adjoining area - pubs would be so much better if it weren't for all the people, eh?) that it was hard to hear even though I was near the front. Plus the audio recording didn't take, so… c'est la vie. He spoke mostly about Web 2.0 (though he was also asked to speculate on Web 3.0!) and future plans for O'Reilly. Don't know how he had the energy to talk for, I think in the end, almost half an hour, after flying all the way from California only the day before. But not surprisingly he left not long afterwards, and then the place just emptied out very quickly - people had obviously gone mainly to hear him rather than to chat to fellow geeks.

Ian mentioned that the next mixed Geek Dinner is going to headline a female geek. I shall definitely try to go to that one too, commitments permitting.

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