Oxford Geek Night 16 date confirmed
After a slightly longer break between Oxford Geek Nights to make room for Christmas and the rest, I’m pleased to announce the sixteenth Oxford Geek Night will be on Wednesday 17 February, 2010. That’s next year! Well, in just under two months’ time.
Keynote speakers are confirmed: OGN16 sees the return of microslotter Andrew Katz, lawyer at Moorcrofts Corporate Law and open-source specialist; he’ll be joined by Chris Thorpe, founder of Jaggeree. We hope to have more details about the talks soon.
We’ve already got some microslots lined up for OGN16, but if you’re interested in doing a microslot then submit your suggestion here. Microslots are five minutes long and the OGN crowd is very welcoming to anyone who can stand up and talk for that long!
Right. Now that’s all finalized, I’m off to have a celebratory sherry and listen to some Christmas songs.
Oxford Geek Night 15: open government and web marketing
OGN15 is in a bit over a week’s time, on Wednesday 25 November. It promises to be a great evening as usual, with varied keynote and microslot talks and the usual Oxford(shire) geek chat and networking.
Interestingly, we’ve ended up with common threads through the two quite different keynote talks. Fintan Galvin, who’s talking about the semantic web and its effect on marketing strategies on the web we’re more at home with, will be explaining how the former will change the way we think about such priorities as SEO with regard to the latter; along the way he’ll be mentioning Drupal, which is an ideal solution to a whole host of web content problems. Meanwhile, Jeni Tennison will talk about a new initiative in open UK government, data.gov.uk, which is currently in closed beta and uses a complex stack of technologies including… Drupal and RDF! RDF takes centre stage in the forthcoming Drupal 7 release, so more by luck than judgment our common topic is a pretty hot one.
Of course there’s microslots and the Pitch too—contact me if you want to volunteer for the sixty-second open-mic Pitch, as we’ve still got some spare slots—and we’ve got sponsorship to make sure the whole evening is not just free as in beer, but free as in… other beverages that are available. The Guardian Open Platform are sponsoring drinks again, and Apress have promised us some books for the book raffle. Torchbox is as usual very kindly sponsoring my time, venue costs and infrastructure for the night. Thanks to all our sponsors for their generosity.
Almost everything is in place, which means I might get away with a few days off before the night, but I promise to turn up on the 25th fit and rested. Assuming I’m not still stranded in Birmingham New Street. But then how likely is that, really?
Yet more sponsors: Apress and Friends of ED confirm for OGN14 and 15
Following last week’s great news from the Guardian Open Platform about sponsoring the two remaining Oxford Geek Nights, there’s more great news for the Oxford Geek community, as Apress and Friends of ED have also agreed to sponsor OGN14 and OGN15 with books a-plenty.
We try to always have a book raffle at the end of each Oxford Geek Night, where anyone who’s stuck a business card in our magic business-card box gets a chance to win one of several books donated by a generous sponsor. So thanks for Apress for stepping up to the crease and fielding a whole over of books in our direction for OGN14: we’re guaranteed a great selection of books for local geeks, and another great reason for coming along to OGN14. How can you not?
Yet more sponsors: Apress and Friends of ED confirm for OGN14 and 15
Following last week’s great news from the Guardian Open Platform about sponsoring the two remaining Oxford Geek Nights, there’s more great news for the Oxford Geek community, as Apress and Friends of ED have also agreed to sponsor OGN14 and OGN15 with books a-plenty.
We try to always have a book raffle at the end of each Oxford Geek Night, where anyone who’s stuck a business card in our magic business-card box gets a chance to win one of several books donated by a generous sponsor. So thanks for Apress for stepping up to the crease and fielding a whole over of books in our direction for OGN14: we’re guaranteed a great selection of books for local geeks, and another great reason for coming along to OGN14. How can you not?
OGN 14 and 15 sponsored by the Guardian Open Platform!
After much discussion and chewing of metaphorical pencils, the Guardian Open Platform have very kindly confirmed sponsorship for Oxford Geek Nights, for the rest of 2009! That means drinks will be courtesy of the Open Platform at both Oxford Geek Nights 14 and 15, which I think you’ll agree is great news. Even better news is that regular sponsors Torchbox and Moo are on board as well, so Oxford Geek Nights will continue to be free events.
Speaking of which, OGN14 is now less than two weeks away, and my rising panic is tempered only by the fact that I’m already panicking about moving house shortly beforehand. But you shouldn’t be panicking; instead, put OGN14 in your diary now, or follow it on Upcoming.
OGN 14 and 15 sponsored by the Guardian Open Platform!
After much discussion and chewing of metaphorical pencils, the Guardian Open Platform have very kindly confirmed sponsorship for Oxford Geek Nights, for the rest of 2009! That means drinks will be courtesy of the Open Platform at both Oxford Geek Nights 14 and 15, which I think you’ll agree is great news. Even better news is that regular sponsors Torchbox and Moo are on board as well, so Oxford Geek Nights will continue to be free events.
Speaking of which, OGN14 is now less than two weeks away, and my rising panic is tempered only by the fact that I’m already panicking about moving house shortly beforehand. But you shouldn’t be panicking; instead, put OGN14 in your diary now, or follow it on Upcoming.
Microslots confirmed for OGN14
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!
Microslots confirmed for OGN14
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!
oxfordbloggers.com
It was around 9 or 10 in the evening in the Jam Factory. After a very successful Ox Tuttle, Ben Walker (@ihatemornings), Colin Mercer (@colinmercer) and myself came up with one of those genius drunken ideas. oxfordbloggers.com is it.
The aim is simple – to create a place to collect the thoughts and ramblings of Oxfordonians to give an idea of the general flavour of the local part of the blogosphere (man, I hate that word!)
The rules are also very simple. Live in Oxford? Have a blog? Want to be part of a relatively active nerd/geek/blogging community? Answer yes to those and you’re fully qualified to get your blog put on there too :) A rough outline/overviewy kind-of-thing reads something similar to this:
- We’re not going to put advertising on the site, or make money in any way.
- All content is fully attributed to the blog authors.
- All links go directly back to the original blogs.
- We’re not enabling comments – if you want to comment, go to the blog.
- We’re only doing this to get some more people to read blogs that we think deserve it.
Taken from the about page of oxfordbloggers.com
It’s still early days (less than 24 hours from conception to go-live) so excuse us if you manage to break something or you get a splinter from a badly sanded edge.
Successful OGN 13: free drinks, good speakers, hilarious pratfall
I’ve finally recovered from this week’s Oxford Geek Night 13. As usual, it seems like everyone had a great time; as usual, I was running round too much to notice. Free drinks from the Guardian Open Platform almost certainly helped.
As usual the talks were a really high standard, with great keynote talks from Andrew Walkingshaw and Bruce Lawson. And while the previous midsummer OGN was pretty quiet, this time the Jericho was practically heaving. The crowds came in quite handy in the end, as only a handful of people noticed when the beercrate step onto the stage disappeared from under my feet as I was climbing up it, and I landed in a clumsy heap back on the pub floor. That Fentiman’s ginger beer is powerful stuff.
Anyway, in a fit of organizing I’ve also booked the next two OGNs for Wednesday 23 September (OGN14) and Wednesday 25 November (OGN15). Anyone wanting to do a 5-minute microslot talk at either of these should submit the details as early as possible. Sixty-second open-mic Pitches can be communicated via any medium: comments here, separate emails or messages on Twitter (@jpstacey).
(Thanks again to all the sponsors: Torchbox, Guardian Open Platform, Friends of Ed and Moo.)
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