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This Geek Dinner saw us in a new venue, Ye Olde Cock Tavern on Fleet Street, since our old haunt, The Bottlescrue has called time for good. The new place is actually better, I think, because we can have one floor of the pub to ourselves and not encroach on anyone else too much. And the food was much better, too! Thanks to Ian for finding such a great place for us to meet.Becky Hogge was the guest. She heads the Open Rights Group, and explained the work of the ORG, who summarise their goals as:

• To raise awareness in the media of digital rights abuses
• To provide a media clearinghouse, connecting journalists with experts and activists
• To preserve and extend traditional civil liberties in the digital world
• To collaborate with other digital rights and related organisations
• To nurture a community of campaigning volunteers, from grassroots activists to technical and legal experts

[Becky explains the work of the Open Rights Group]

[Attentive audience]

The ORG’s website is well worth a read if you are interested in any issues regarding digital rights of various kinds.

BarCamp Presentation
I’m happy to have finished writing my presentation for BarCampLondon2. I’ve decided to do a spot on Better Picture Taking as there seem to be plenty of folks with digital cameras who want to know more about getting the most out of their gear. It won’t be technical, and it won’t be biased towards any particular type or brand of camera. Instead, I’ll be covering the basics of good composition and lighting, plus editing your pictures for showing to friends. After BarCamp, I hope to blog most of the content for those who couldn’t attend.

I’ve gone for a non web-related topic as I figure I’ll be teaching many of the attendees how to suck eggs if I talk about web standards or css. Others have said that some of the most interesting topics last time round were those which were a bit off the beaten track. So here’s hoping it will go down well.

Geek/Girlgeek Dinners
I notice there are a couple of geeky dinners coming up soon. They seem to have shot themselves in the foot slightly in that they’re both on the same day! So, clone yourself or toss a coin to decided which of the following you’d rather attend on 21st February:

• London Girl Geek Dinner 10 Sponsored by Amazon!
  The speaker for the evening is Jeff Barr from Amazon and he will be speaking on web services.
• Geekdinner with Tara Hunt & Chris Messina of Citizen Agency
  Both Tara and Chris are best described as Upstanding Citizens of the Internet world. They are well known for looking at the longer term view and talk with words like vision, attention to detail, community, sustainable, open, higher purpose, etc.

Unfortunately, I’m unable to attend either event as I’m already busy, but I will be keen to read any blogs about them afterwards. Please let me know if you write a review.

WSG London #3 - Accessibility
Stuart has put together another great programme for the forthcoming WSG meeting on 28th February. Now that’s one I will be able to attend, and am looking forward to what Anne McMeekin, Niqui Merret and Mike Davies have to say on the subject.

Great evening at the Geek Dinner last night, with guest Molly Holzschlag. I’ve only been to one other, where Chris Anderson gave us a talk about The Long Tail, so I was a bit surprised that Molly didn’t give a presentation as such, but we all enjoyed her company and she was pleased to chat with anyone about anything.

It was nice to catch up with existing friends; Sheila Farrell, Robert Lee-Cann, Ross Bruniges, Ian Forrester and Chris Heilmann, plus make some new ones! I had interesting chats with:

• Laurence Postgate about freelancing, design, beer and rugby
• Paul Boag on freelance photography
• Molly about her nomadic lifestyle!
• Andy Mitchell about beer and geeks
• Eystein Alnæs on web design, Norway and Huskies
• David Long about blogging and design
• Frances Berriman on girlie geeks

So there we are, a good group of names I can now put faces to - see you at the next one folks!

Oh, and fresh from the recent Microformats WSG-meet, I’ve marked this up with a load of hCard info

You may have wondered if I’ve gone into hiding as the blog has been very quiet lately. Well, the answer’s no, but I have had a week off doing stuff at home and not going near the computer very much. Makes a nice change, every now and then!

Emerging from my exile, I’m blinking in the bright light of day and trying to catch up with a bit of blog reading, writing and other pc-related stuff.

Olly Hodgson has some excellent links, which I’ve been following up, and then generally getting lost in the blogsphere. I’m also waiting with baited breath to see how The CSS Div almost got himself killed…

Here’s a few good posts about accessibility issues:

• Bruce Lawson talks about making accessible PDFs
• Punkchip gets to grips with relative & absolute units and makes some excellent suggestions about Accessible Radio Buttons and Checkboxes
• A List Apart gives us What Is Web Accessibility? and Working with Others: Accessibility and User Research
• And Rob Cherny has an interesting post entitled Ajax and Accessibility: You’re Doing it Wrong (Hijax)

As an antidote to my recent exile, I’m also being very sociable this week, with the upcoming events in London to attend - WSG London #2 - Microformats and the London Geek Dinner with Molly H. Will report back on them later in the week.

I’ve recently signed up for Upcoming.org so I can keep an eye out on what’s in the pipeline in the near future. Two events caught my eye, coincidentally on consecutive evenings (all we need is a third one and they’ll be like London Buses…)

Thursday 19th October
Web Standards Group Meeting # 2 where Microformats will be discussed. See Muffinresearch.co.uk for more details.

Friday 20th October
London Geek Dinner, special guest Molly E. Holzschlag. See the Geek Dinner website for more details.

Both events look like a good evening; perhaps I’ll see some of you there.