June ‘s London Geek Dinner

So, yesterday evening was the London Geek Dinner – attended by over 100 geeks. Despite the horrid venue (where a couple of simple fajitas and salad cost £20, and a rum and coke cost £8), I think everyone had a really good time.

It was mostly the usual suspects from the London scene with the added twist of the Americans over here for Reboot. However, mad props have to go out to Peter Orosz from Budapest, Hungary. He had come over to the UK just for that evening, leaving the following day! Peter was an interesting guy – he trained as a doctor only to then decide he didn’t want to work in the medical profession! He works as a developer at a medical translation service called espell.com.

Robert Scoble was interesting to talk to, and we exchanged numerous notes about Channel 9 and backstage.bbc.co.uk. He spoke about the fact that whilst his blog was sometimes critical of Microsoft, it’s what kept it honest. It all meant that when he writes about the good that Microsoft is doing, it has some integrity because it isn’t all one-sided. I think that’s a very useful thing to remember – particularly if your employer takes to you task over your critical posts on your own blog.