Another successful Cape Town Geekdinner, Garrulous Grape, has come and gone, marking the start of our second year.  Not much to say beyond great people, great vibe, and, at times, great entertainment (Brad Whittington doing Tania's Slideshow Karaoke was hilarious).

Others have more to say, though:

• Jonathan Hitchcock explains our "projector screen hack" and gives thanks
• Ian Gilfillan explains his wearing tie-dye for his "Geek/Hippy talk"
• Paul and Kerry-Anne posted a photo from the evening on Cape Town Daily Photo
  
• Jeremy Thurgood also reports back
• Marius Bock returns to the fold after a few months
• Beverley Merriman met a bunch of new people at her second GeekDinner

Special thanks to Perdeberg for the wine - I'm sure there'll be a bunch of new entries into their clink-to-win competition.

Plans for May Cape Town GeekDinner are already underway, and I might organise a GeekBrunch some Sunday or GeekPoker some weeknight in April for those who need an intermediate fix.

The GeekDinner Cape Town first birthday dinner is upon us - Garrulous Grape is our seventh GeekDinner (one year and three days after the first one), happening on Monday, 31st March from 7pm at Greens in Plattekloof.  Yes, we've finally headed north!

Before that, the Cape Town Python User Group meeting (aka CTPUG 9) at the Bandwidth Barn on Saturday, 29th March, from 2pm.

The first Africa Source was in Namibia in early 2004.  The second was in early 2006.  Both experiences really got me excited about open source all over again, and introduced me to people I remain in contact with today.

I guess the regular fix has created an expectation.  After becoming a bit jaded about the state of progress in open source (with a few exceptions, of course) in the country, it seems I need a pick-me-up of the sort of Africa Source.  (The only primarily-open source related event on my calendar in 2007 was UWC's Digital Freedom Exposition, which didn't evoke much excitement from me.  But there was also the iCommons Bring and Braai, which did.)

GeekDinner has been filling some of the gap, and StarCamp helped a little more.  One thing the Source events did was teach me that the surest way to make something happen is to make it happen - do something about it.  So, after StarCamp, I've been thinking of a few events for the coming two years.  Some are probably more likely than others, of course.

Most likely is StarCamp in July-or-so 2008 in Cape Town.  The group that attended StarCamp in December seemed to really enjoy it, and just coming together again for a day or two again will be worth it.  But I think it'll be bigger and better next time round, and I'll be starting preparations for it soon.

Next up is a South African web technology conference.  I want to get the guys who make IOL, Mail and Guardian (including Amatomu), CareerJunction, KnowledgeTree, SynthaSite, Tank, Afrigator, and more together in a room for one to three days (they can leave the room for a few hours to sleep, if they're good).  I want to see them sharing lessons learned and ideas and generally improving the state of the art in the country.  Oh, and there's obviousy the chance and hope that we'll have people from outside SA coming down to attend.

And then there's the possibility of getting international speakers on technologies to come for the conference,  give some public talks in collaboration with GeekDinner, and hopefully to give training before or after the conference.

Although I might not be there, I'm very interested in helping anyone wanting to try replicate the GeekDinner and StarCamp formula to other regions in Africa.  I'll probably be speaking about how to replicate the success we've had with these and transmit some lessons we've learned at a conference in Dakar next month, so there may actually be a good chance... 

The farthest out there is another national, regional, or continent-wide Source event like Africa Source.  Certainly the geographically larger the scope, the larger the requirement for experience with both event organisation and navigating the world of international non-profit funding.

I'm a bit late this month with my monthly calendar of Geek events.  Can't really get much more later and still be in the month...

Anyway, Frugal Fennel is the next GeekDinner, tomorrow (31 January), at Sloppy Sams along Somerset Road in Green Point, Cape Town.

We're already sort-of full, but if you put yourself on the reserve list, then when the occasional bunch of people remember that it's their spouse's birthday and pull out, you have dibs on replacing them.

It feels like ages since the last GeekDinner - probably the combination of having lots of holiday time and lots of hard work at both work and on StarCamp.  Can't wait to relax, see my friends, and hopefully make some new ones. 

I don't think I have enjoyed working as much as I have in the last two and a bit months at SynthaSite.

That's quite a statement.  I'm a bit surprised that I'm willing to say that.

I'm not sure of how much of that enjoyment is due to changes in me, but I know it's at least a non-trivial contribution.  Being burnt out last year after over two years of hectic overcommitment to KnowledgeTree and the emotional rollercoaster that entailed has meant many lessons have been learned.  Even though I'm not fully recovered, I think I've learned how to enjoy working again, and this started to be seen last year at CareerJunction.

StarCamp and the GeekDinners also have at least a non-trivial role to play - I'm not only enjoying work a lot more, but I'm also generally enjoying life more.  I'm very upbeat about Cape Town as a venue for technology innovation, and I'm enjoying meeting new friends, and interacting with my existing ones more.

It's strange - the work that I've been doing recently at SynthaSite would probably have driven me mad before.  I've been moving from a systems administration base eight years ago towards full-time developer/architect/lead positions at Independent Online, KnowledgeTree, and CareerJunction, but suddenly I'm doing what I'm sure I would've thought fairly lowly sysadmin tasks last year, and I've got no minions to boss around.

I've been thinking a lot about reward/response in the last 18 months (I'm sure I drove Brad, Bryn and Shaun crazy during this period).  I think a lot of the reason I'm enjoying working at the moment is that it has an obvious impact.  A large portion of the work I've been doing has been around process improvement - ways to make the lives of everyone in the company better.  It's easy to feel good about your work when your colleagues thank you for making their lives easier.

The work dynamic at SynthaSite reminds me a lot of the early days of KnowledgeTree as a serious project at Jam Warehouse.  Whether you are "management", have a title like "CTO" or "VP Engineering", or are just a lowly untitled employee, your comment is not only respected but expected.  I don't think I appreciated that feeling at KnowledgeTree enough, but having known it then, I can recognise and appreciate it now.

It's also nice to be surrounded by other people who are enjoying themselves - whatever their motivations for that might be.  Certainly, being in line to make some money if things go well is probably high on some of their lists.  For others, just the excitement of being on the start-up ride.  Perhaps it's the perks.  Or maybe just being part of a well-oiled machine.

Anyway, I think this bodes well for 2008, and hopefully some of you will be inspired to try enjoy working again, whatever that might require doing.

Well, StarCamp's over - at least this time around.

I really want to thank some companies that helped us out to make the whole thing work out:

• The African Institute for Mathematical Studies (AIMS) were very gracious and generous hosts, and we were helped a lot by their staff and students over the two days.
• Quirk created and distributed the StarCamp T-shirt.  Send one email, have one phone call, and then all I had to do was follow the great feedback through the process.  All organised at the last possible minute because I left it so late, but delivered promptly and perfectly.  Thanks!
• AlterSage created a whole whack of name tags and generally cool stickers that helped us to know who each other were and occasionally what belonged to whom. 
  
• Sentient Communications gave us almost all of the cash towards two great lunches supplied by Kauai - everyone loved the lunches after spending so much time providing energy to their brains.  Or so I like to believe.
• The Western Cape Linux Users Group gave us a small amount towards the lunches, and also paid for all the cool drinks, coffee, and tea.
• ProsperIS for agreeing way back to provide logistical aid in terms of networking and power cables, projectors, PCs, and monitors, and making sure nobody wanted for anything like that.  (Updated: I can't believe I forgot to mention it!)

And the following people similarly contributed in ways that made the event happen at all, and happen as well as it did:

• Jonathan Hitchcock was my main partner in crime in organising StarCamp, even though he was busy in Johannesburg for some of it and learning for and writing a certification exam, and moved house on Saturday morning.
• Joey da Silva helped out with phoning and finding venues, and took on finding the best way to spend our food money (and got a better deal than I would have ever got), and dealing with my last-minute questions about where to get stuff, and so forth.
• Andy Rabagliati suggested AIMS as a venue, and organised things from the AIMS side for us, and generally helped towards keeping them happy.
• Deon Erasmus for delivering and taking back the stuff from ProsperIS, generally making himself useful, and for making everyone laugh at the "TEH TINK" license plate he bought.
• Nur Ahmad Furlong designed the StarCamp logo
• Christine da Silva and Tim Shier for being the first two people at the venue on Saturday to make sure every person who arrived got a T-shirt and a name tag.
• Stefano Rivera and Jeremy Thurgood for helping to set various things up (and for being the first two to sign up as attendees)
• Joe Botha broke the ice with an impromptu (and very interesting) talk on the state of telecommunications licensing in the recent past (since 1994 or so), and on the license conversion process currently going on.
• Glen Verran, Shaun O'Connell, Ian Gilfillan, Tim Shier, Simon Cross, Adrian Rossouw (currently homeless), Rafiq Phillips, Russell Cloran, and Adrianna Pińska all presented.
• Charl van Niekerk for coming all the way from George just to attend StarCamp (oh, and some other stuff too)
• Tim Allen, for convincing his friends from Princeton to give talks
• David Robinson and Alex Halderman, for giving up a day of their week-long holiday from Princeton in Cape Town, for presenting and talking about the topical issues of Net Neutrality and E-Voting.
• My "boss", Vinny Lingham, for talking a bit about his experience raising funding for our business, SynthaSite, and for bringing along a few people for a few hours before and after his talk.  And my other "boss" at SynthaSite, Brent, for letting me organise things, visit venues, and so forth on work time.
• My former colleagues from CareerJunction, Jam Warehouse and even earlier days, including Bryn Divey, Shaun O'Connell (again), Adrian Moisey,  and Alan Levin, for everything from moral support to continuously offering to help.

Wow, that's quite a few people - almost half the people that attended the event.  Which, I suppose, is how it is supposed to be - everyone pitching in and making it fun for themselves and for other people.

So far, the feedback has been very nice ("Well done!", "I really enjoyed it"), but perhaps not all that useful in terms of doing things better next time. I'll try to devise a way to get better and more feedback.
 
I'll have more to say about things after I spend the next few days sleeping, but I had an amazing time, met some cool people, got to spend time with some of my favourite people, and got all soppy watching everyone chatting with everyone else and forging and strengthening connections.  Got quite a few people interested in coming to GeekDinners as well - always nice to have new perspectives and experiences.

The Eccentric Eggplant may have been the best GeekDinner yet.  We had a great turn-out (just not enough to have to have people eat their food standing), and our first attempt at Slideshow Karaoke was brilliant.

It all went down at Ferryman's on Wednesday (ie, the 28th November 2007). 

Jonathan Hitchcock, our logistics occifer, was our MC again, and also our first Karaoke victim.  But, before that, we had Adrian Moisey talking about OpenStreetMap, and Jennie Stenhouse talking about her experiences in the Games industry (not "gaming" as in gambling).

After Jonathan's Karaoke on the etiquette one must follow when dealing with British Royalty, we had Adrianna Pińska presenting on licenses and Charl van Niekerk talking on the Google Summer of Code, and on his experiences working on Joomla! recently on it.

Bryn Divey then brought the roof down with laughter as he gave his Karaoke on a topic that doesn't matter as much as the way he presented it.  The DoD's long-term plan to have the CIA start Facebook to collect all our data featured.  "Privacy is part of Web 1.0" was well-received as well.

Finally, Albert Visagie gave us some information on the Cape Town chapter of the Software Process Improvement Network.

Lots of new faces, and lots of people talking to people they hardly new and making new connections - that's really what makes doing work (no matter how little) on these GeekDinners worth it.  Why not help organise the next one, by joining the GeekDinner planning mailing list?  Or sign up to hear about the next on the GeekDinner announce mailing list.

We're up to 78 Geek Diners for Eccentric Eggplant, the fifth Cape Town GeekDinner, to be held at Ferryman's Tavern at the V&A Waterfront on Wednesday (ie, the 28th November 2007).  According to the sign-up page, only 2 more people are allowed, but there are always a couple of last-minute cancellations when people remember that it's their anniversary and their spouse will kill them if they're off geeking instead of taking them to a nice dinner.

(Extra points: Take the spouse to the GeekDinner.  Don't get killed, and get to geek out at the same time.)

This will be our first attempt at Slideshow Karaoke - where we volunteer two victims (Jonathan Hitchcock and Bryn Divey in this case) to give a talk on a subject they know nothing about with slides prepared by others (Russell Cloran and Jeremy Thurgood in this case) and given to the speakers at the same time the speaker is giving the talk to the audience.  If it works, I think we should have a few slideshow karaoke sessions at StarCamp...

Thanks to Nur Ahmad Furlong and a couple of iterations inspired by Jonathan and I, StarCamp now has a logo.  Nur also made a badge to put on your page so that people know that you're going and can find out what it's about - you can get the code on the StarCamp main page.

I'm going to be checking out a venue tomorrow that sounds perfect for us.  Just in time too - only two more weeks to go!  We've had more trouble finding venues than I thought we would, as evidenced by the running commentary on the venues page for StarCamp, and I've certainly learned a lot about what's out there and what people expect and why my "perfect dates" for getting school halls weren't quite so perfect after all.

Hopefully we can finalise the venue in the next day or two, and then we can stop holding back on inviting people.  We have 50 people signed up on the wiki page, which is a good start, but I want to see at last 75 people on that list by mid-next-week.  I know I've delayed sending invites until things looked certain, and they're looking fairly certain to me now. 

Trust Tania to put together a pretty reasonable and equitable political history of the Cape Town technology get-together scene since BarCamp Cape Town through 27dinner, GeekDinner, and towards *Camp.

We've just had our first post to the starcamp-planning mailing list, where we hope people who are interested in helping out will join us to plan *Camp.  Our main aim over the next month is finding a venue, but more publicity and discussion about what people want out of it is always useful.