I was a bit worried there might have been a riot at Oxford Geek Night 11: our drinks funding hadn't been renewed. But by the time Torchbox had got the venue, PA and me available for planning the whole thing, Pearson had already delivered a really smashing set of ten books for the raffle (Python Web Development with Django and Don't Make Me Think among others). Then, completely out of the blue, keynoter Mike Kus from Carsonified brought two enormous blue bags of schwag, including a stack of T-shirts, and some of the beautiful Carsonified journals he'd been responsible for getting together for FOWA '08.
I'd like to think that our keynoters weren't eclipsed by any sort of tawdry display of schwag lust, and it would be more or less correct, but only thanks to the speakers and their talks. Natalie Downe's return to Oxford Geek Nights, the events she actually began some two years ago, was welcomed uproariously, with a talk to inspire us all to treat the implementation of CSS with more respect. Mike Kus' talk followed this and built on it a little, making the case for letting really groundbreaking design lead on the otherwise implementation-obsessed web. The feedback I heard was that his was probably the most beautiful and visually striking talk we've ever had. Anyway, between the two of them they've undoubtedly shook up some of all of our preconceptions. (Not too much, I hope: I don't want to have to go back and restyle all of my websites....)
After this, and before the microslot talks, we had a new feature---The Pitch---where people were given no more than sixty seconds to tell the audience whatever they wanted to say, and not necessarily what they wanted to hear. We had announcements of events, software, vacancies and even Earth Hour. Every "pitcher" won themselves a Carsonified journal, and that probably contributed to make it a surprise success; hopefully it brought the community together a bit. Ben Walker even phoned in his pitch: in the 21st-century equivalent, by recording it beforehand like the Oscar-winning prima donna we've always suspected him to be. The Pitch was followed by the microslots, which were all really interesting as usual---I won't go through all six here---and should be up on the website imminently.
All in all, a great OGN as usual, with a great atmosphere, lots of chatting and plenty of giveaways. We're hoping to get more sponsorship lined up for the next OGN, alongside Torchbox's usual largesse. So watch this space for more information about OGN12.
