{"id":605,"date":"2009-07-30T02:09:01","date_gmt":"2009-07-30T00:09:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/?p=605"},"modified":"2009-07-30T02:09:01","modified_gmt":"2009-07-30T00:09:01","slug":"obstreperous-olive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/?p=605","title":{"rendered":"Obstreperous Olive"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve just come back from Obstreperous Olive<\/a>, the latest incarnation of the famous Geek Dinner<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was lots of fun again, with talks ranging from Fritjof Capra’s<\/a> systems thinking, Umberto Eco’s<\/a> Mouse or Rat essay on translation, Clean Code<\/a> and whether to dump someone with clinical depression.<\/p>\n

That was just at my table.<\/p>\n

The actual public talks were Joe Botha<\/a> on the Open Spectrum Alliance<\/a>, Matthew Buckland<\/a> on 20FourLabs<\/a>, Media 24’s reaction to their space shuttle codebase, John-Luke Hutchinson on Real relationships amongst the Noise, and Could Twitter be a ‘Decision Network’<\/em>, and myself in a talk entitled Placebos, Nocebos, Quackery and Big Pharma<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I didn’t actually mention the H word<\/a> in my talk, but as I knew it would, it came up in a question, and in a rant<\/del> discussion afterwards. Not a fan then are you Jonathan<\/a>?<\/p>\n

The Slideshow Karaoke was performed by Elodie Kleynhans, some batteries, and a few J\u00e4germeisters. She said it would have been more fun if she’d got a topic where she could read most of the words. I’m not sure…<\/p>\n

Some good talks, and lots of fun. The next one will be in September<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thanks to all the volunteer organisers and Delheim<\/a> for helping make my talk funnier than it was supposed to be.<\/p>\n

You can read more posts on the Geek Dinners at Planet Geek Dinner<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Related Posts:<\/p>\n