Last week, Oxford Geek Nights received some brilliant news: OGN19 was going to be sponsored by both the Nokia Ovi Store and Data.gov.uk, HM Government. Organization was well under way, so I popped out for a couple of days to see my family (and to go to my granddad's 90th birthday celebrations. Ninety.)
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, top tech magazine Wired had recommended OGN19 on their diary for next week. This perfect storm has happened before, when .NET magazine mentioned OGN4. As I recall, that was one of our best-attended geek nights, despite being in November. I managed to actually be around for that earlier mention, but this one has taken me a bit by surprise.
All in all, OGN19 is shaping up to be a really great event already: as already mentioned we've got some smashing keynote talks planned from Leila Johnston, David Caruana and Florian Müller. Since then we've also booked four cracking microslots, on open-source mobile portals, "internet plumbing.html", controlling an industrial robot with Twitter, and the battle of J2EE vs Python for web development. And then the funding news arrived. Now that the Nokia Ovi Store are funding a drink per geek, we're almost certain to have a great evening.
So maybe it's no wonder that someone submitted OGN19 to the Wired UK diary. But it was a pleasant surprise nonetheless. I just hope the rather discerning Oxford geeks have all put it in their own diaries too: Wednesday 1 December. Otherwise it'll just be me and Wired UK, drinking a hundred and forty pints. Merry Christmas!
