2.4 quick observations on the 27Dinner, (:the social media social:)

January ‘07 Johannesburg

1. Good bloggers, do not necessarily translate into good public speakers :-) – but it is still nice to see and hear the ‘real people’ behind the online personas.
2. To horribly mutilate one of I think Mike’s favorite quotes, only about 50% of the crowd attending the dinner were geeks – and it is virtually impossible to tell which 50%.
   • One criticism that could be hurled at the event is that the presentations tend to lean heavily towards self-promotion – perhaps understandable given the tight time limit for the presentations, about 7mins. – Which Mike said was the reason the audience weren’t allowed to pose any questions to the invited guest speakers, suggest a limit to no of questions asked.
   • The audience was lily-white, except for the delegation of two dudes from the online industry conference – this is unfortunate, how do we fix it? – Aside, in this case Mike invited questions from the floor before they poor dude even had a chance to say ‘hello’ – a floor which was, perhaps justifiably, rife with obvious antagonism for the conference. I think I kinda get how all of this came about – still, couldn’t have been fun for the dude, then again they can probably afford therapy ;-)
   • Spare a thought for the presenters – there were some seriously smart and accomplished individuals attending making it a pretty intimidating audience to speak to (but bodes well for Cerebra, now officially launced). On that topic I was quite impressed by how Vincent Maher struck a balance between techno bravado, obvious enthusiasm for what he had to say and a sense of anti-heroism..
   • Dave Duarte… since when are capetownians allowed to be that bouncy!?

Oh, and seeing as I was exhibiting the social finesse of a soggy cornflake, a special thank-you to the great guys that made an effort to introduce themselves!

All in all was very kewl, well worth attending and am glad I went.

Ergh, lightning overhead, that’s it for now – need to unplug – might post have posted some pics.

Links:

27dinner
The 27dinner on 27 January 2007 at chilibean
gregoogle: Social networking – it’s all geek to me, or not!
27dinner – Aquila’s photoset on Flickr
Geek Dinners South Africa – Aggregated photopool on Flickr
* crazyrant *: 27 reasons to smile