Cameron's Brain

Melbourne Geek Dinner - this Friday (26th August,2005)

See Tejas' blog for details!

Chris Vidotto starts a blog...finally!

My old partner in crime, the Dot, has started a blog! Bout frickin’ time! Mind you, after the crap he saw me go through at Microsoft as a result of my blog, it’s no wonder he waited!

He says…

Well, it has certainly taken some more than gentle persuasion from some of my friends, working colleagues and BizTalk community here in Australia.... ;-) but I thought it's time to get with the program and join the merry blogging crew (hey only a couple of years late)!

This local BizTalk community was started 5-6 years ago (although small) by one of my good friends and ex MS colleagues Cameron Reilly who now has decided to venture into his own world domination exploits!

Melbourne blogger meet-up 15 June 2005

Well tonight, as promised, we had the first Melbourne Blogger meet-up. All SIX of us.

ROLL CALL:

Phil McCredden (geekyinfo, signposts) - our gracious host and Australia's most tech-savvy minister

James Farmer (blogsavvy, incsub) - academic and organiser of the recent Blog Talk Downunder conference

Michael Specht (My Blog on HR) - corporate HR guy

Matt Trentini (Sublime Software) - software programmer

Phil Molly Malone (Mollyzine) - support engineer

It was a great night and I'd like to thank Phil for providing the venue and Coke! We ate pizza, chatted about many things, of fools and kings, and the guys got to hear a sneak preview of a bad-ass comedy show called Matt, Freak and The Fatboy that's launching on TPN shortly.

Here's a final shot of Matt trying out a Tablet PC for the first time:

Melb Blogger Meet-up

Okay… so…

Trying to accommodate everyone is going to be tricky, so what I suggest is, let’s hold his first one, as planned, at Phil’s place on Wed 15th June (yes that is this coming Wednesday) and we’ll work out how to do it better next time!
Here’s my thinking….

   1. Let’s meet there around 8pm
   2. If you can’t get “all the way out to Preston”, let me know and I’ll try to pick you up or arrange to have someone else pick you up
   3. At 8.15pm we decide everyone who is coming is there and order pizza
   4. We wrap up when either Phil kicks us out or the local cops throw us in the divvy.

Everyone cool with that plan?

And again, Phil's place is:

Northern Community Church of Christ

Corner Oakover Rd and High St

Preston

If anyone needs to call me on the night, my mobile is: 0400 455334.

update on Melbourne blogger catch-up

Thanks to those of your who filled out the survey about a Melbourne blogger meet-up. As of today, I've had 25 responses.

• 24 say they would come to a regular meet-up. To the one person who said "no"... why did you even bother filling out the survey????
• Most people want to have it monthly.
• even tie as to whether or not we should have it on a weekday evening or a weekend BBQ.
• Most people said they've pay up to $10 to cover venue and nibblies.
• and 80% would prefer just a casual catch-up with nibblies.

So... how about I try to find a venue for one evening to start with and take it from there? With only 25 responses, I figure only a dozen people will turn up... we could probably do this at a café?

Melbourne Blogger BBQ

The last couple of times Darren Rowse and I have had brekky we've talked about putting together a regular Melbourne blogger dinner. The big trouble with that idea is finding a venue in the evenings that allow 10 - 50 bloggers to comfortably mingle.

But as I was driving past Yarraville Gardens this morning and thought "we should do a BBQ".   

Anyway, I put together a quick survey to get an idea of who'd be interested. If something like this is already happening, and I didn't get the memo or something, someone please tell me to stop wasting my time.

Click here to take survey