McFilter

A Busy Social Week

This week has seen me out almost every night at some sort of networking/social gathering. I even had to miss watching the Champions League game on Wednesday and so missed seeing Gerrard get his century.

GeekUp Liverpool

On Tuesday evening I was at 3345 Parr Street for this month's Liverpool GeekUp. Dave Verwer gave an interesting talk where he built a little iPhone app in less than 20 minutes. iPhone development doesn't look too tricky, and there seem to be a collection of "pattern" apps to help get you started. Dave's main recommendation is to get to grips with Cocoa development in general, and then the jump to iPhone dev is fairly easy.

There was a larger turnout than last month, but once again everyone was welcoming and I got to chat to lots of interesting people. I also seem to have agreed to give a talk about something, probably Arduinos. It might be a month or two before I've worked out exactly what though...

Liverpool LUG

Thursday night was another geeky get together, but this time the Liverpool Linux Users Group. The OpenStreetMap talk had to be cancelled as they couldn't get their usual room and so it was just a drink-and-chat session in the bar at FACT.

The membership seems a little geekier, and less business-y, than the GeekUp crowd, but isn't full of rabid free-software advocates arguing over which Linux distro is best. I even survived admitting that I used to work for the Evil Empire (aka Microsoft).

Liverpool Green Drinks

Last but by no means least, yesterday evening I headed to Doctor Duncan's for the Liverpool Green Drinks evening.

Doctor Duncan's is one of Cains Brewery's pubs with a great range of their ales on tap. I was on the IPA last night, and I'll have to work through the rest at future Green Drinks nights. It's also a lovely old building with the walls in the room we were in decorated with ornate tiles.

It made a refreshing change to be the only geek there and I had an enjoyable evening chatting with a variety of people from environmental consultants to architects.

I think I'll be attending all of the gatherings in future, although hopefully they won't all fall back-to-back every month.

Tags: GeekUp Liverpool LUG Linux Green