Cambridge Geek Nights: Recommended

Last night I went along to the sec­ond Cam­bridge Geek Night, held upstairs at the May­pole pub in Park Street, Cam­bridge (right next to the Park Street car park) for an evening of net­work­ing, chat­ting and short presentations.

In addi­tion to good com­pa­ny, the evening includ­ed free drinks (cour­tesy of The Guardian’s Open Plat­form!) and the pub serves excel­lent food. What more could you ask?

The three pre­sen­ta­tions con­sist­ed of Richard Boul­ton on Xapi­an, an inter­est­ing open-source search engine; a pair of local lawyers from Tay­lor Vint­ners solic­i­tors giv­ing an overview of the legal­i­ties of entre­pre­neur­ship (and although I knew some of it, it was most def­i­nite­ly direct­ly use­ful); and final­ly Michael Brun­ton-Spall from The Guardian, who gave us a fas­ci­nat­ing view of the paper’s API and what you can do with it, and a tiny glimpse into the future of what I believe is the best news­pa­per in the coun­try. And between pre­sen­ta­tions, time for a good chat with a few of the (about 30+) attendees.

Kudos to Véro Pep­per­rell, “Social Media Con­sul­tant and Geekette”, aka “that­cana­di­an­girl”  for a great evening: next event is in about six weeks, so if you live or work in the Cam­bridge area, keep an eye on the Cam­bridge Geek Night blog for details of the next one. Plus you can sign up for an email list here.