Last night went really well. A nice little group of folks with a variety of backgrounds, enjoying wine and geeking out just a little bit.
The event was held at Adobe’s behest and on its dollar. Thanks Tim Brook, European AR guru! Last night was a very good engagement platform.
Ben Watson, Group Manager for Enterprise Developer Relations at Adobe, really gets it. I am happy because I am pretty sure the Adobe RedMonk relationship is now set for lift off. We can definitely help with developer community issues. Ben hasn’t even met our smart people yet. Ben is the future of Adobe, because developer community outreach is the single most important task for the merged Adobe Macromedia company. Ben used to be at Microsoft and his take on developers and APIs shows deep experience. Most importantly Ben reall understands the importance of wicked demos.
It was great to meet Tink and Roo and Pieter and Derek and Rob, and hook up with Microsoft’s Peter Bell in a less corporate environment than usual. Darren of eightbar wrote the evening up here. Lets not forget Richard Veryard, another man with more blogs you can shake a stick at.
The eightbar chaps are from Hursley’s emerging technologies group. They get to do weird stuff like automate lego and program to second life APIs.
As usual Bedales was good value and Emily looked after us very well. The thing about Bedales is you can choose any wine, whether its seven quid or 500 quid, and just pay a fiver corkage. I am going to have to set set Emily up a blog though, because the Spitalfields Bedales really needs it own web presence. The leathery 1982 Chateneuf de Pape was definitely a highlight.
The evening may lead to interesting outcomes – such as, potentially some new directions and opportunities for the IBM Adobe relationship.
Reactions were so positive from everyone I am thinking about making the meetup a regular event. Any vendors interested in sponsoring a really good night out should let me know… will organise cool people for wine.
Peace out- have a great long weekend.
Tags: Adobe, Microsoft, Bedales, eightbar, IBM, Hursley, Arena, Tim Brook, Ben Watson
Roo says:
May 26, 2006 at 6:20 pm
It was great to meet you in person James. Nice one for putting together a fantastic evening, and thanks to Adobe for the fine wine selection. The eightbar gang came away very happy at having met so many cool people.
I shall definitely be recommending Bedales. Emily’s business card, one of the nicest I collected last night, nestles nicely in my collection of contacts not to forget. If you do set up a blog for them (I can imagine you running it in return for regular tasting sessions), I hope you’ll let me know.
Looking forward to meeting up again some time, and perhaps setting something up at Hursley too.
AndyP says:
May 26, 2006 at 8:46 pm
Sorry I couldn’t make this one James, reading the feedback it sounds like a really interesting and entertaining evening – hope we can hook up at a future event.
Simon Phipps says:
May 27, 2006 at 3:34 am
Sorry to have missed it too, James. If you decide to have something near Hursley don’t forget to invite us Hursley alumni too 🙂
Tink says:
May 27, 2006 at 3:04 pm
Just wanted to thank you again for a great evening with great people and great wine.
Lets link up and see if we can push the project we discussed into action.
Robin Wong says:
June 5, 2006 at 6:08 pm
Hi James,
cheers for the invite, had a great time, and thanks for the lesson in italian wine. Took your advice and started not one, but 2 blogs. Decided to make fools of my company as well by starting a blog of their antics ‘outside of the work space’