oxfordshire

Oxford Geek Night 26 happens in ten days' time. As tends to be the case these days, when I'm not panicking, I'm really looking forward to it.

We've got two fascinating keynotes as always. Simon Whitaker popped over to Reading recently to storm the Geek Nights there, and is back in Oxfordshire to discuss the lessons he learned, when he tried teaching coding to schoolchildren. Also, documentary maker and writer Michael Story will be explaining how the media can lie to us, and why they do it.

We've also got all the other usual stuff: four exciting microslots from fellow Oxford(shire) geeks; and a nearly full roster for our sixty-second, fast-paced open-mic slots in The Pitch. And there's free entry thanks to regular sponsors Torchbox, and a free drink per geek (while stocks last) thanks to OGN26 sponsors Historic Futures.

Stick a week on Thursday in your diary, then. And for more information about OGN26, and regular but infrequent updates afterwards, you should subscribe to the newsgroup or follow @oxfordgeeks on Twitter.

(Sorry for only going on about OGNs these days. With two site launches in the past two months, I've not had a chance since the last one to blog about anything much here: although I'm writing a few things elsewhere that might get a big reveal later!)

The next Oxford Geek Night is on Wednesday 21 July, in less than two weeks' time. I for one am really looking forward to it.

We managed out of sheer luck and cheek to bagsy a fantastic speaker for OGN18, the ever-Interesting Russell Davies. Russell was the organizer of the 2007 and 2008 Interesting conferences, and is involved in lots of fantastic projects, including Speechification and Newspaper Club. He's also a writer for Wired, a speaker at many conferences including Lift 2010, and what one might frivolously call a futorologist or pundit. He's going to talk about his experiences turning internets into print, and what he's learned from doing it as part of projects like the Newspaper Club.

Along with our keynote speaker we've got half a dozen of the absolute best of local microslot volunteers. There's talks on topics as far ranging as "designing backwards", linked data, graphing 19th-century social networks, genomics, CSS and Rotacoo's Spotify #fridaymix tape. A few new faces and a few established (and deservedly so) local faces. As always we'll be putting video up on the site afterwards, so there'll be a permanent record of our high-quality speakers.

Finally, we hope to have space for the Pitches - our sixty-second open mic slots that anyone can volunteer for, even on the night - and a book raffle. All told it should be a great excuse to saunter over to the Jericho Tavern in the July sun / sudden downpour (delete as applicable.) Hope to see all the other Oxford geeks there.

For anyone who's interested: I've written a debut blogpost on Sustainable Witney . It contains disturbing revelations about my personal carbon emissions. I know, eh: not for the faint-hearted. And if that's not racy enough for you, I'll be discussing loft insulation in a few days' time.

Doesn't get any more interesting than this. No, you misunderstand me: it actually doesn't get any more interesting than this.

Never let it be said we don't listen. You said you wanted OGNs to start half an hour earlier; they now start half an hour earlier. And now you said you wanted more time to chat at OGNs. Lo! and behold: we've lined up only four microslots for Oxford Geek Night 14, to give you more time to say hi to everyone else.

In fact, after I came back from conference and waded through my emails (sorry for anyone who had to wait forever for a response) I realised that we'd ended up having a surplus of microslots. But I've been mean; I've been cruel; I've been sending a lot of slightly frantic emails. And the end result is that we've probably got a couple of potential microslots already lined up for OGN15 in November anyway. See? Nothing gets wasted at an OGN, especially not good, locally grown ideas and talent. The upshot of all of this is that both keynotes and microslots are confirmed for OGN14.

Speaking of local talent, we've still got spaces on The Pitch, which is our sixty-second open-mic session. You can say whatever you like for a full minute: introduce yourself or your company; advertise a vacancy, product or service; discuss a neat idea you had; announce a conference or local meet-up: anything, really. If you're interested email me at jpstacey.info or find @jpstacey on Twitter.

Otherwise: stick OGN14 in your diary for Wednesday 23 September. That's in just over two weeks' time! Turn up, kick back with a beer, and get ready for some extra full-on chatting. Grr!

Those of you who subscribe to the Oxford Geek Nights Google group hopefully need no reminder that Oxford Geek Night 13 is on Wednesday 15 July. But, more excitingly, the two keynotes are now confirmed.

Bruce Lawson, Open Web Standards evangelist at Opera, is no stranger to Oxford Geek Nights, and covered new developments in accessibility back in OGN10. This time he'll be discussing the forthcoming new standard for hypertext markup, HTML5, and what effects it will have on web-browsing as we know it.

Andrew Walkingshaw, co-founder of Inkling Software, will present the rise (and further rise) of their service for data visualization and storage, Timetric. He'll also be discussing recent work by the Guardian which has incorporated Timetric visualizations, including a recent article on the relative purity of illegal drugs seizures over time.

We still need microslot talks, though, so if you're interested then do volunteer.

It might be a bank holiday for you, but I'm currently putting the final touches to Oxford Geek Night 12, which is this Wednesday. I need to make sure all the speakers have confirmed (most definitely have); get their draft talks onto a pendrive; print out posters and plan timetables; and retrieve and test all our tech and cables; so that the second projector will work fine, and we've got a laptop for everyone to run their talks on: that sort of thing.

Most importantly, from your point of view, I need to sort out equipment for our improved PA setup (following your feedback, very gratefully received, on earlier OGNs). I also need to find and pack the dozen great books donated by Apress, to be given out to randomly selected attendees in our book raffle. We're also looking into drinks sponsorship, and we might have more news on that by Wednesday. And we also still need volunteers for the Pitch, our sixty-second open-mic slots where you can say absolutely anything you want, as long as it's not obscene or about COBOL.... Well, it depends on how obscene.

Come to OGN12, then. There'll be talks and chat and ideas and fun and geeks and nerds and technology and webs and everything you expect from a Geek Night. And if the worst comes to the worst, then you at least have around a one-in-ten chance of leaving with a book worth up to thirty-five pounds, which is not to be sniffed at.

The next few weeks look like they're going to be incredibly busy. Right now my greatest worries are of course about Oxford Geek Night 11 on Wednesday 25 March. All the speakers are lined up---Natalie and Mike are presumably both gearing up to give two great keynotes on CSS systems and graphic design on the web respectively, or maybe they're just enjoying their Sundays---and I've got most of the tech ready, with network cables hanging round my shoulders and blinking lights where there should be blinking lights.

OGN11, though, is starting half an hour earlier---the crowd has spoken, and it was suggested by a couple of people after OGN10 too---which could lead to some confusion this time round. That's right: OGN11 keynotes start at 8pm. But as I've still yet to get the venue to take our money, then they don't actually know about the change of time yet. I'm sure it will all work out fine.

One thing which actually does seem to be working out fine: the local BarCamp is almost full. BarCamp Oxford is on April 4--5, and we've got a tentative upper limit of 50 people. The venue---the elegant University Club---is booked, and catering is pretty much there, so all we've got to do is pile a stack of projectors into the club and wait for everyone to turn up at the evening meal on the Saturday.

Similarly, Oxfringe 2009 is going great guns, and the programme is now finalized. It's huge this year, with John Hegley headlining the festival on Saturday 11 April. I have to start working out just how much we can get round to seeing, and then, you know, buying tickets.

But before any of that, tonight is the People's Premiere of Age of Stupid, a simultaneous showing of the film in some thirty cinemas across the UK. As Torchbox built their site (and I built the first version, back when it was called Crude) then I can't give an unbiased opinion, but the crew preview we went to convinced me that it was probably the most important documentary of this century, and probably of our future years on the planet: however many of those there turn out to be. We've got tickets to see the Oxford node of this twenty-first century, distributed mass screening. That particular cinema has entirely sold out, but if you're near a showing with free seats, then for heaven's sake---for your own sake---go along.

With any luck I'll be talking to Danny and Lou on BBC Oxford tomorrow at half noon, about the phenomenon that is Oxford Geek Nights. It's all rather good timing in one sense, given that OGN10 is happening tomorrow evening, but terrible timing in another sense, given that I have to get ready for OGN10 happening tomorrow evening.

All of this is subject to change, of course. Producer Mark Watson (not that Mark Watson) has been very obliging in me messing him around with times and locations, agreeing to the phone interview and other shenanigans, but live radio being what it is, and Mark's well of patience being surely only as deep and as full as the next man's....

Still, I'm looking forward to it. When I'm not panicking that they'll ask me something incriminating. All right, I confess! I had two of the free drinks at OGN8!

Two or three days ago whenever anyone mentioned the 7th Oxford Geeks Night to me, I winced. By then it was less than two weeks from Wednesday June 25; we only had four microslots out of six; I’d just started filling in existing speakers on the drill; and I was looking at spending a weekend writing a talk on server-side on-the-fly web-to-document creation with OpenOffice.

Now, suddenly, it looks like being the best night so far in 2008. We’re starting with two great keynote speakers: Charlton Barreto of OASIS, W3C and Adobe, talking about the takehomes from Web 2.0; Tom Taylor of Headshift talking about the beauty of pointless mashups (such as his Twitter feeds @lowflyingrocks and @towerbridge).

There’s then a full roster of microslot talks covering a crazy range of technologies. My colleagues Matthew and Tom have answered two of the requests that the Oxford geek community themselves put out, and are doing talks on the new technologies of Comet and Google App Engine respectively; Andrew Godwin will be showing off his beautiful if computationally… trying… graphing code for Last.fm; Drew McLellan continues his simultaneous journeys through good web practice and late-70s/early-80s children’s TV shows; Simon Whitaker does some anyone-can-try-it hacking of the OSX address book; and Duncan Parkes discusses the mySociety application PlanningAlerts.

The evening will finish with a book raffle, courtesy of Friends of Ed. So if you stay for the full three hours then you’re in with a good chance of going home one book richer. Disclaimer: the venue seats 140 people and we won’t have a book for everyone.

If you’ve not stuck it in your diary yet then do so: Wednesday June 25; doors open 7.30, entrance free thanks to Torchbox and Google. I’ll be the one panicking, and hotswapping laptop monitor cables.

My rather cheesy write-up of OGN6 is now available on the Google Open Source blog. I’d like to say it was cut to ribbons and all the worst bits are editorial additions, but I think they put it up verbatim.

Cheers, all: see you at OGN7, June 25th.