McFilter

I spent an enjoyable couple of hours last night chatting about a range of subjects loosely centred around the topic of web development with some of the guys from Refresh Cambridge.

There were about a dozen of us who turned up, and I can report that posting stupid photos of yourself on the 'Net before an event makes it much easier to find people when you get there. There was rather a lack of geek t-shirts, but Karl (who was the only person there when I arrived) spotted me at the bar and then later on we even had a "Refresh Cambridge" sign on our table. So I don't think we were too hard to find.

It was a convivial and relaxed event, with people able to arrive late or leave early without disrupting things at all. The Tram Depot was a little bit noisy (although I think most pubs would be the same), which made it tricky to have one "group" conversation, but that was only a problem once or twice when we were trying to decide things like whether we need to do anything with the website, or what format the next meeting should take.

We thought it would be good to try a talk for the next meeting, sometime in November. Karl had the inspired idea that we should encourage everyone (although it won't be mandatory) to bring a topic they can talk about for five minutes - that way we can get an idea of what sorts of things people are interested in, and cover a range of subjects.

I guess that gives me about a month to think up a topic...