Open Knowledge Network 5th December 2008

As several people have now asked about this, I thought i'd just blog it!

The first Open Knowledge Network event is being announced for Friday 5th December 2008 at Peacock Visual Arts from 6.30pm until late.

The confirmed list of speakers and topics for this event is as follows:

• Adam Proctor - Animation using After Effects
• Sean Delaney - Developing Air Applications
• Scott Couper - Developing for the Mobile Web
• Joe Howe - Making the 'Joemus' Album using Cubase
• Claire Singer and Jack Keenan - An Introduction to MaxMSP

And yes, the Open Knowledge Network does/will have it's own website. The site is in production and will be announced as soon as it's available. We are very eager to hear peoples ideas/functionality etc for the ongoing design and development of this website and encourage you to let us know.

Read the official announcement on the Peacock website

...and for those of you staring blankly at your screens right now, here is a brief intro to the Open Knowledge Network:

The Open Knowledge Network is a free event aiming to bring together the many disciplines found in the creative/digital/technology industy by means of "show and tell" sessions, presentations on various disciplines and general networking with a laid back atmosphere. Developed by Peacock Visual Arts in partnership with East Coast Interactive, the aim is to promote the creative/digi/tech industry and investigate the many cross overs between disciplines that you may not know exist. A series of mini presentations by people specialist in their respective areas, on many subjects gives way later on to a networking session. The whole event will reveal an interesting overview of what is currently happening in the industry both localy and further afield.

To be as relevant to it's attendees as possible, we have a unique method of both registration and for selecting topics/speakers at each event. We are asking each and every person what they do, what they would like to learn more about and if they would like to do a mini presentation on their craft. This ensures the needs of the people are firmly addressed.

Also of note is that if a particular lineup doesn't appeal to you and you'd rather not sit through a few presentations on things you dont have much interest in, the networking session which follows is not to be missed, there will be music, screenings, geek chat and drinking involved, all with people who you probably want to speak to.

Held at Peacock Visual Arts on a regular basis, this promises to be a very worthwhile and enjoyable event. see you there.

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3 comments - Posted by mark at 8:56 AM - Categories: Meetup | East Coast Interactive

Future Aberdeen Meetups

Last night we had the second Aberdeen web meetup with a slightly larger attendance than the first so that's progress!

Talking of progress, we made a bit of an announcement last night about the future of the meetups which I for one am quite excited about. My long term beer assosciation with Jack Keenan from Peacock Visual Arts has now produced something special. Jack, and Peacock have been considering holding a tech/media/creative event and so it was only a matter of time before we rammed the two together. Last night we announced the format and regularity of the meetup and I have to say it was well received by those who'd turned up for the web event.

The new meetups will be held at peacock, will cover a much larger range of geekery and creativity and will (hopefully!) run once a month. We are aiming to bring in guest speakers and hope to grow links with groups accross the UK. This is a huge step forward for our little meetup which is only two events in but I think shows the hunger for this kind of meetup in Aberdeen. We are also building a website for the meetup and will release more details when we have something to show you all.

I encourage everyone involved in the digital/tech/creative industry localy to come along. We're all very excited about it!

Oh and for the record, the excuse "I'm baking a cake" will not be considered a valid reason to not attend...not now, not ever.

2 comments - Posted by mark at 9:47 AM - Categories: Meetup

Second Aberdeen Web Meetup

Just a quick post to say that the second Aberdeen "Web Types" Meetup will be going ahead at 6pm on Friday 17th October 2008 at The Globe on North Silver Street.

This meetup will have a bit of an announcement/pitch going on as although it's only the second meetup, I have recently had a discussion with another organisation about the future of this particular meetup. I promise you it's all VERY positive and if you want to know more, you know where to be!

It would be great to see anyone in or around the industry coming along, the feedback from the first meetup was great and I hope this one will be even larger in numbers.

3 comments - Posted by mark at 8:43 AM - Categories: Meetup

Aberdeen web meetup needs a name

Yep, it's time to put your thinking caps on and come up with a name for the new and shiny Aberdeen web meetup. Post your suggestions for it or email them over to me and i'll get the next stage of this underway in the next couple of days. Be creative.

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3 comments - Posted by mark at 10:11 PM - Categories: Meetup

First Aberdeen web meetup a success

6pm, Friday 15th August 2008 saw the first "web types" meetup in Aberdeen and we all had a good time. The chat ranged from who everyone was, who they worked for and what they were working on at the moment to normal sort of pub chat that we all know, love and laugh at. This meetup had an attendance of 9 people from mostly different companies which was pretty good and although I had to do a shoot at 8pm, I believe the night went on for several hours afterwards.

I am really pleased that it was well received and that people actually came out for it. I know there are a good few others who couldn't make it for this one but we'll see at the next one...overall a worthwhile meetup.

As always, I am interested in any suggestions people have for these meetups so feel free to reply here or email me direct if you're shy ;)

I forgot to take any pics of the meetup so unfortunately I dont have any to post here but if anyone else took pics, feel free to forward them.

I think we all agreed that the meetup needed a name and blog of it's own so feel free to start discussing that too...would it help if I set up a google group for this? (James B mentioned this previously)

Let me know...and cheers to all who got involved to make this happen.

As a side note, quote of the evening(at least up until the point I left) goes to East Coast Interactives very own Mike Duguid in arguing the case for coldfusion over php (yes...i was as surprised as anyone...Mike's a php developer!) and it went like so:

"Mark lives in Bridge of Don and so how does he go about getting into work in the middle of Aberdeen?....does he buy a car (the commercial solution, in this case coldfusion) or does he buy a box of nuts and bolts and build a car (the open source solution)?"...point made!

what others are saying:

http://www.seandelaney.co.uk/my-blog/31_aberdeen-web-types-meetup/

4 comments - Posted by mark at 10:10 AM - Categories: Meetup

Aberdeen Web Meetup Update

Friday 15th August 2008 at the globe on North Silver Street (next door to Under The Hammer) from 6pm is the finalised date, time and location for this one. Hope to see you there. get in touch with me through my contact form if you need any more info on this.

cheers

mark

0 comments - Posted by mark at 9:11 PM - Categories: Meetup

Aberdeen web meetup on 15th August 2008

So the initial emailing of 10 people I knew to be interested has resulted in very positive feedback and interest from several others that I wasn't currently aware of.

To bring everyone up to date I'll be sending another email within the next week but I can confirm that the unanimous decision for the date it is to be held will be Friday 15th August. Details of the venue, and any other points will be in the email and also posted here.

This is an opportunity for those of you in the know to let others that I'm not in contact with to explain that there will be a meetup for those in and around Aberdeen to meet, chat, generally "geek out" and have some beer. At a basic level, if you can get me email addresses for others, i'll add them to the list of people to contact. I'm not too comfortable with the idea of basically "cold calling" people so this would really help.

Discussions are about to take place about some great ideas for the future of this event and I encourage anyone with any interest to pipe up and get involved too. This will be a worthwhile thing to be involved in if the current feedback is anything to go by so if you want it even better, get yourselves involved.

2 comments - Posted by mark at 9:34 PM - Categories: Meetup