“F*ck ‘em!”, says Patrick H. Lauke
Posted by Neil Crosby on August 28, 2006 07:00 PM
Well, okay - he didn’t quite say that.
Yesterday was the first Geek in the Park event, organised by the Multipack, up in Royal Leamington Spa. Even though it was about three hours away from where I live in London, and it meant leaving as soon as Patrick H. Lauke and Bruce Lawson had finished the main thrust of their talk (and even then I didn’t get home until 1am).
It was a good nice day away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and I got to meet a whole bunch of new friendly faces. I was really trying my best yesterday to say hi to new people and not just keep talking to the folks that I already knew. First up amongst the unsuspecting hoarde was Inigo Montoya Surguy and his lovely partner Michelle (who knows a thing or two about police training procedure). By way of speaking to them I got chatting to Dave Addey who as it happens I’ve had vague dealings with before, since he used Standardista Table Sorting to help enhance a huge table full of iPod version information a little while back. I also got to meet Tim Down (creator of log4javascript) and Mark James (icon creator extrordinaire at famfamfam.com). So that was nice.
After getting a bit light headed from the sun, it was decided that a quick drink at the Jug and Jester was in order, before Dave, Tim and myself headed off to “The Grill” (disclaimer - it may have actually been called something else), a rather posh looking grillery that served a most amazing burger for £10. Needless to say, the three of us in our jeans, t-shirts and designer geek stubble looked a little out of place in such aspicious surroundings.
Having eaten, we rushed back to the Jug and Jester to arrive just in time for the designated start time of Patrick and Bruce’s talk - “Where the rubber meets the road: Web Accessibility and New Romanticism Pragmatism”. Unfortunately, the talk didn’t actually get underway until gone 8pm, a little over an hour later than scheduled. This was no bad thing in the end though, as it gave me a lot of time to chat to a lovely couple whose names have escaped me for the moment.
Over the course of the day I took a fair few pictures, and these are (of course) available on my Flickr page. Evryone’s photos are on the Geek in the Park photo pool.
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Comments
by trovster on August 28, 2006 07:56 PM
Glad you could make it all the way from London, and I hope you can share your experience at London events, of which the rest of the UK have travel experiences similar to yours for this event.
The talk was scheduled to start at 8pm…
‘The evening event will still go ahead (of course) and will start at 7pm. Bruce and Patrick will take the stage around 8pm and will finish around 9pm (depending on audience participation and speaker tangents)’
And it seems the tangents took the talk up to over an hour half in total!
I thought it was a fair turn out, and fairly nice weather (condsidering recently). Although, like you, I’ve forgotten most people’s names! Time to start Flickr tagging and noting!
by Neil Crosby![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.workingwith.me.uk/nav-commenters.gif)
on August 28, 2006 08:08 PM
Dammit - it did say that the talk was going to start at 8pm, didn’t it? Ah well.
I was really impressed by the number of people who turned up, and it was great for me personally to see a load of faces that I’d not come across before. It was definitely a different crowd than the two London based events I’ve been to previously.
I’m really terrible with names though. It’s one of the reasons I hand out my card so much - if someone has one to give to me as well it works as an excellent memory aid when it comes to trying to remember who you talked to. This works especially well when the person has a picture of themself on their card!
I hope I didn’t complain too much about my travels yesterday - I’m well aware that most of the rest of the country ends up having to travel down to London for most things of this ilk, so it’s only fair that I should get to do the same sometimes too.
by Inigo on August 29, 2006 11:09 AM
It was good meeting you, and a really nice day; I was really interested in your work with acoustic fingerprinting. And I mentioned my my version of table sorting - but it’s really a (re)introduction to JavaScript than table sort code. I hope we’ll meet again at the next one of this sort of thing.
by Kevin on August 30, 2006 09:36 AM
Well before the talk you were chatting to Cathy and myself, but I think we only meet the “couple” part of your description so I’m afraid I’m not sure who you’re talking about there.
Glad to see I make it into two of the scariest photos on flickr though! I didn’t even know my eyes could get that wide.
by Neil Crosby![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.workingwith.me.uk/nav-commenters.gif)
on September 5, 2006 07:32 AM
Inigo: It was great meeting you too - it’s bizarre how you can just bump into people who have interests in similar things which are off the beaten track like that, isn’t it? I’ve not had chance to read through your article properly yet (there is a lot of it!) but skimming through it looks good. Hopefully we’ll meet again some time soon - will you be multipacking on the 9th?
Kevin: Piffle and tosh - of course you two are the lovely couple! And yup, they are two particularly scary photos, aren’t they? I might have to rethink my advertising policy…