Oxford Geek Nights 5
Should have practiced my talk! Then maybe I would have realised it wasn’t even close to being under 5 minutes. Video and slides on the OGN page.
Despite the talk being a disaster, it was, from an objective standpoint, successful: I’m getting somewhere with my public speaking jitters, and lots of people came up later to talk about it.
I met some really interesting people and heard some great talks. Conversations of note:
- Stelios Koundoros, founder at Optimor Systems, trying to bring rationality to consumerism with a recommendation system with some interesting maths under the hood. Some interesting standpoints, some refreshingly Internet-sceptic - probably the only ones in the room! Main thrust of his argument was the shallowness and poverty of online interaction versus face to face life. Also disagrees with me about the value of philanthropy where the funder is not also the executor.
- David Langer, heroic young web entrepreneur fresh out of Oxford, now busy making Groupspaces.com an invaluable social tool for us all! Great tips and stories for someone such as myself looking to follow in his footsteps! Was one apex of a short but interesting triangular debate between he, James Turnbull and yours truly about the soundness of advertising-based revenue models
- A frenetic short American sociologist whose name wasn’t forthcoming. Fired a million points at me about philanthropy in the US vs the UK - several of which were, I’m sad to say, wrong! Still, quite an interesting experience!
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