Oxford Geek Nights 5

Oxford Geek Nights offer a chance for web developers and designers in the local area to get together, share their skills and talk about new ideas, techniques and technologies.

Each OGN consists of two keynote talks of 15 minutes each. There are also frenetic bursts of socialising, sometimes adverts for other local groups, but always interspersed with two sets of 5-minute-long microslot sessions.

Blog reactions on Technorati

Keynotes

• Open Knowledge and Componentization, by Rufus Pollock, executive director of the Open Knowledge Foundation and economics research fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge; and his lovely assistant Nate Olson (video) (slides [zip])
• Designing a web app with character, by Denise Wilton, creative director at Moo, co-designer of the Nathan Barley site, and partly responsible for anarchic online forum b3ta (video) (slides [zip])

Microslots

• Icon design explained, by Jon Hicks (video) (slides [pdf])
• Network philanthropy: what Web 2.0 can do for social progress, by Philippe Bradley (video) (slides [pdf])
• The LLL, by Christian Rayner (video) (slides [zip])

• Developing the Carbon Account, by Tom Dyson (video) (slides [pdf])
• Mapstraction, by Marc Metten (video) (slides [zip])
• Going viral: patterns found and lessons learned when traffic goes crazy, by Andrew Chapman (video) (slides [pdf])

Interested in doing a microslot for OGN6? It's easy enough. Let us know by submitting your proposal, and we'll try to fit you in.

Shameless plugs

• BarCamp Oxford — Pete Cooper and Daniel Lewis will give an update to BarCamp Oxford, hopefully happening in mid-2008.

Other news and events

BCS Oxfordshire

The BCS (British Computer Society) Oxfordshire branch is holding two events between now and the next OGN:

• How Big Business learned to love Virtual Worlds, with Roo Reynolds talking about IBM, Second Life and other virtual worlds.
• What's Hot, where a guest panel of industry experts run BCS' own Dragon's Den!

Both are at the Oxford e-Research Centre, 6 Keble Road.