Minibar April 20
The Minibar event on Friday night at The Truman Brewery in East London was a great session, with (i guess) 200+ people in attendance. Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu/Canonical gave a headline talk about Ubuntu a viable open source and free Linux alternative to the MS dominance. I also personally met up with Glan Thomas of design shop Substance, Alex Straub of Truphone, Paul O’Nolan a consultant at IRRI, Gavin O’Carroll at Rememble, and Margaret Gold of Mobile Innovation.
By and large the presentations were good, but most could have done with a simple demo (our own included). The only demo I remember was Gavin O’Carrol from Rememble.com, and it was a valiant effort by one man trying to operate keboard, mouse, and hold the microphone simultaneously while battling with terrible feedback. Still, well done Gavin, it worked out well.
Yes, so izimi should have demoed, thats the feedback I’ve been getting, so we’ll do next time. I learnt a lesson: with just five minutes you can either try to cram in all the facts with words and slides, or you demo just two of three key things and then leave the audience to follow it up. Conslusion is that to this technically aware audience a set of slides comes across as bull*, but a demo speaks volumes. Shame that when I spoke to the organizers a demo wasnt even suggested as possible.
Another that would have benefitted from a demo was Truphone. Alex showed us a really cool demo of what his VoIP over WiFi from your mobile (throw away your SIM!!!) could do while we chatted before the presos started. Then when he did his 5 minutes he just talked and it was no-way as interesting. My lesson is learnt.