Tag Archives: geek

Tips on running a successful online community

November 19th, 2009

Yesterday I gave a talk at the Leeds GeekUp event. It was a 20:20 style presentation on a subject of my choosing, so I went for tips on running a successful online community.

Still flushed from the success of the Oxford Flickr Exhibition and having given a lot of recent thought to just how much we’ve achieved as a group in the last three years it seemed a good subject to tackle.

The talk seemed to go down very well with more than a few laughs elicited from the crowd. I had a really great time and the Leeds lot are a really nice bunch of people. It’s good to see the grassroots level geekery flourishing all over the country.

20:20 style talks are pretty tricky and if I learnt one thing it’s not have so many bullet points in my notes, there’s really only time for one nugget per slide. It was a lot of fun though and I’m going to see if JP is up for trying them out at a future Oxford Geek Night.

I’ve posted my slides if you want to have a look but I’m not sure how much sense they’ll make in isolation. Of more use are the accompanying links on delicious.

Thanks to everyone at Leeds for a great night.

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Stephen Fry blogs! The world is a just and good place after all

September 20th, 2007

This is a doozy.

Via Nat Torkington on the O’Reilly Radar I find out that Stephen Fry, that most entertaining, erudite, and gorgeous man, blogs. Not only is he blogging, but his first post is a fantastic exploration of the reasons why we love technology so much.

Based around the would-be “iPhone Killers” that the market keeps coming up with (whilst never quite getting what makes some hardware so compelling) he lays out his history not only with Apple, but every other piece of shiny that he has felt compelled to buy:

I have, over the past twenty years been passionately addicted to all manner of digital devices, Mac-friendly or not; I have gorged myself on electronic gismos, computer accessories, toys, gadgets and what-have-yous of all descriptions, but most especially what are now known as SmartPhones. PDAs, Wireless PIMs, call them what you will. My motto is:

I have never seen a SmartPhone I haven’t bought

He then expands on a knowledge of technology that leaves me shocked, awed, and frankly, loving him even more than I already did.

As Nat says:

I recommend getting a cup of tea or coffee and sitting down to enjoy the whole thing. He’s not just good to read, but he hones in on the strengths and weaknesses of each device. Enjoy!

Keep posting Mr Fry.

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Escaping the annotated version of you

July 24th, 2007

The thing that limits you with Google is what you can think of to google, really. There’s some kind of personal best limitation on it, unless you get lucky and something you google throws up something you’ve never seen before. You’re still really inside some annotated version of your own head.

- William Gibson, interviewed on the Amazon Bookstore Blog

Hat tip: Boing Boing

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The definition of futility

May 1st, 2007

The results of this search are a classic example of why DRM won’t work.

As was once said…

Given enough eyes all bugs are shallow

… and when we’re talking about DRM, it is most definitely a bug.

Update (2nd May): Interesting developments overnight. Turns out Digg was removing posted stories about the HD-DVD key, that of course triggered a user revolt, and now Digg has changed it’s position. Heh.

I debated about adding the ‘funny’ tag to the original post, and in the end decided not to. Events last night have made me change my mind.

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Oxford Geek Night Drupal presentation

February 9th, 2007

I’ve been meaning to post this since I got back from the Oxford Geek Night on Wednesday but I was struck down by a dose of man-flu (more commonly known as “a cold”). Apologies.

So, Wednesday 7th February 2007 was the inaugural Oxford Geek night event, at the Jericho Tavern. I was asked to give a talk as part of the first ‘microslot’ session, where 6 individuals talk for 5 minutes on a topic of their choosing, and I chose Drupal, seen as I spend the bulk of my development time hacking on it in one form or another.

The presentation started with a quick introduction to Drupal Core with a focus on the Taxonomy module. Then I walked people through the modules that I use the most: Pathauto, Views and the Content Construction Kit. Finally a whirlwind tour of some Drupal sites out in the wild including MTV UK, The Onion and Ask A Ninja.

Trying to give an overview of a system as large as Drupal in 5 minutes is a pretty hairy proposition, but I think I at least managed to pique peoples interest enough for them to want to find out more.

Overall the night was a great success. There were some really interesting talks, Simon Willison’s OpenID presentation and James Wheare’s Oxford bus times mash-up being two highlights for me personally. I also got to meet some cool new faces in the Oxfordshire development scene, and there was beer. Top night all round really.

Natalie will be putting up the slides and podcasts of each talk at some point, at which time I’ll update this entry. In the meantime there are the obligatory pictures on flickr.

Update: Links to the slides and podcasts are now up on the Oxford Geek Nights site.

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