New Blog and New Faces

It’s great to see us ‘Shire geeks getting together so regularly. I must say when Leu and I made plans to gather the geeks, we really hoped it would attract interesting folk; and it’s certainly exceeded my expectations. At last night’s gathering, Kirsty and I were trying to work out how long it had been since @Shropgeek started, and guessed it’s been about a year now. We’ve had at least 6 meetings in 10 months, with a bit of a hiatus following Leu’s passing in September. It’s been a personally-uplifting experience and a night I look forward to every month.

I was pleased to meet some new geeky types from Shrops last night, when we were joined by Adam Griffiths and Dan Catt at the Admiral Benbow in Shrewsbury. Adam’s done a nice write-up of last night’s meetup over on his blog, so have a look if you’re wondering how you could have been spending your Friday evening!

One of the things we talked about last night was the plan for having a geeky Christmas do. I’m fairly confident that everyone thought it was a good plan, and it would be a fitting tribute to Leu—whose last Shropgeek discussion was about having just such a party. It would be a celebration of the year past, and a place to invite wives, girlfriends and significant others for a tech-friendly (and possibly themed) party.

Like everything we’ve done with @Shropgeek, this would be your event. So, I’m throwing open the plans and asking everyone to make suggestions and devise your schemes. I’m aware that time is actually fairly short, so if you’ve got ideas, don’t hesitate to let us know.

As always, twitter is a great place for sharing, and we’ll continue to use it to plan the time and location of the meetings. If your idea is bigger than the twitterverse (all 140 characters of it) the comments here are probably the best place to start.

Also, I’d like to invite anyone, at any time, to share your ideas for @Shropgeek itself. Many of the tools and concepts many of us use in our work could be put to use here, if they’re helpful. If you have suggestions, please let us know—or build it and see.