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So that was Oxford Geek Night 2
The second Oxford Geek Night last night went well and was by all accounts a success. We came across various hiccups in setting up but several totally ingenious solutions and a few friendly geeks later we were all set.
The talks were great, and in my mind they really made the event what it was. So, a big thank you goes out to all the speakers. Also in my list of thanks is our very generous sponsor Torchbox who kindly funded the event, keeping it free for all to attend.
Most of the slides and links from the talks are up online already and the remainder will follow shortly. Also to come soon are the videocasts and podcasts of the event. I'll keep you posted as to when they are ready.
The photos are now up online too. If you are uploading any then the official Flickr tag is 'oxfordgeeknight2'. If you tag them they will appear on the site for the event.
If you were at the event last night you may have noticed two women with fancy video cameras interviewing and filming, they were from BBC Oxford South Today. The media coverage has all been a bit of a surprise really, I guess when it got picked up by the Oxford Mail after the last one everyone else wanted to have an "and finally, geeks leave the house" type story! :)
Interview with BBC Radio Oxford (Wednesday 11th, 11:30):
Get Flash to see this player.
(Download Interview)
Oxford Geek Nights on BBC South Today Oxford (Thursday 12th, 18:30)
See high resolution Quicktime version (4.8 MB)
I am really keen to get other people inspired to organise their own, more specialised events. So if anyone wants to start up, say, a JavaScript meet-up, Oxford Pub Standards, Oxford 2.0 or anything really, then that would be absolutely fantastic! I would be happy to help.
I would really love to hear your feedback on Oxford Geek Nights in general and on the last event. I have set up a (optionally anonymous) feedback form, so you can let us know what you enjoyed or how we can improve the next one.
We have set up an announce only email list as a Google Group for Oxford Geek Nights, or you can use our new Atom feed to keep up with news and information.
The Oxford Geek Nights are every two months so watch this space in June/July for the next event!
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Talks for Oxford Geek Nights announced
The talks for the forthcoming Oxford Geek Night event have now been announced. You might already know that Jon Hicks and James Webster are lined up for two great looking keynotes on Typography and Amazon web services respectively, which is very exciting. What you might not know yet is the fantastic line-up we have for the microslots ...
- Jim Purbrick - Second Life Meets The Web
- Josh Hart - The making of Diarised
- Simon Whitaker - Yahoo Pipes introduction
- Mark Norman Francis - Code review processes at Yahoo
- Nick Grandy - Semantic Mediawiki and DiscourseDB
- Marc Tobias Metten - Geocoding
- Matthew Westcott - DIY Javascript effects without Scriptaculous
- Dave Sant - Quakr, 3D modeling of the world
Update [07-04-07]: Due to illness, Norm's talk above has been replaced with Simon Willison talking on 'Why HTML 5 Matters'
So it looks to be a fun and informative event! I hope to see you there, feel free to sign up on upcoming to give us an idea of numbers.
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Oxford Geek Night 2 call for proposals
As there are limited places available for microslots and demos at the forthcoming Oxford Geek Night in April, I have set up a wufoo form (I really love wufoo!) to manage talk submissions.
If you have a talk proposal please fill it out the form below or go to the wufoo form:
Powered by Wufoo -
Oxford's Botanical gardens
Here is an idea for some weekend fun, how about visiting the Botanical gardens in Oxford. Simon and I are endeavouring to go adventuring at least once a week, where adventuring is defined as going somewhere fun and unusual.
Last week we went down the Emergency stairs at Totenham court road tube station to get to the platform, which was great fun and seeing the underbelly of the station was pretty unusual. Yesterday it was adventuring in the Oxford University Botanical Gardens.
The Gardens are the third oldest scientific garden in the world, founded in 1621 they were initially aimed as a research area for investigation of the use of plants in medical research.
They were one of the main inspirations for Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland' and it has also been said that the Pinus nigra (Austrian Pine) where Oxford Professor J. R. R. Tolkien spent a lot of time sitting under, bears a remarkable resemblance to the walking talking tree people (Ents) in the 'Lord of the Rings'.
We didn't know this at the time however, Simon took me on the surprise adventure mainly to see the glass houses, which are indeed fun! They are slightly similar to the Eden project, though on a smaller scale. My particular favourite (and I think Simon's too) was the palm house, thin and unassuming trunks explode at the top into leaves over one meter long!
Entrance is cheap (adults only £2.70) and it is quite fun to run around and see so many unusual plants and mini environments. I will be going again in April after they have sowed the seeds for the giant Lilly's!
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