Further to my earlier post, the first Oxford Geeknight was splendid.
There've been some exciting developments with the upcoming Oxford Fringe: Oxfringe has teamed up with On The Fringe, another local creative group with official festival recognition, so we now have even more events planned.
Throughout next week (March 20--25) there'll be Fringe events every lunchtime (12.30--1.30) in the café at Blackwell's on Broad Street. It's open-mic, so come along and bring something to read out, or just come along to hear the freshest new talent in Oxford.
Organisation and work pressures combined a couple of nights ago to prevent me going to the second Geek Night.
As I gradually emerge from my long, occasionally messy (but mostly fruitful) encounter with Drupal, I hope to neglect this blog less and less. As a couple of well-meaning friends have put Graceful Exits on their aggregator site, Oxford Geeks Planet, then I ought to acknowledge the faith they have in my ability to churn out high-quality content more than once a month. Acknowledging it is easier than living up to it, anyway.
Oxford Geek Nights #3 has been somewhat firmed up since I last posted. It’s in six days time (Wed 25) at the usual place, The Jericho Tavern.
Keynotes are confirmed—Andy Budd of Clearleft and Matt Biddulph of Dopplr—and we even have a (deep breaths) geek troubadour introducing the whole evening.
Blogging from Oxford Geek Nights #3, and it doesn’t look like the weather has dampened the Oxonian geek ardour. We reckon we’ve got around 120 people here tonight, which is fantastic (especially given the circumstances). Standing room only in the Jericho Tavern, sort of like Botley Road right now but without waders. I can’t say the level of fashion sense is any higher, though.
Natalie and Simon are leaving us to move to Brighton, which is a real shame but also an excuse to go to Barcamp Brighton. Tickets went on sale at 11am today, and I’ve managed to nab one before they sold out.
Last-minute planning for Barcamp Brighton now begins in earnest. I've got Andrew printing off links in the other office, and I'm currently working out how we're going to get there in time to register by 11am. Hopefully an emergency phone call to Natbat will secure us a place.
This will be my first unconference, and I am petrified. I do have a talk of sorts in the pipeline, but it's all raggedy and all over the place.
The slides for my Barcamp talk are available, for those who missed it (most of you, you swine). Of interest if you want to see a Drupal site that doesn’t look like a Drupal site, and how you might go about doing that.
I originally wrote a long spiel about Barcamp Brighton, but it was far too boring. Suffice it to say that I had a fantastic time; everyone was friendly, interesting, interested and good fun to spend time with. The free food was amazing---pizza, sushi, buffets, croissants, muffins, etc. etc.