Earlyer on this week was the Open Coffee Leeds Mark 2, it was a nice informal chat with a few people (even If I could only make it for 15 minutes, Gotta throw Imran a link for that, it seems to be more investment related than the GeekUp’s, theres a big difference between the 2 meet ups in Leeds and even though each is only on its 2nd, I can already see the two partys going different routes, each one wants to achieve the same thing, “Bigger event’s in Leeds and a better community”,
GeekUp is a lot more social and its mainley developers or people with some ideas who just want to talk about the industry or get ideas, I don’t have a website which I could display but I still wanted to go and have a chat with people.
Open Coffee however seems to be a small group of investors or big developers and I find open coffee a bit more… “clicky” than the geekup, I arrived half way through due to my lunch hour and it took a while to get into the flow, if I didn’t know some people from last time, I don’t think i’d have enjoyed it, thats not to say that Open Coffee is a bad thing, but I feel its aimed at higher level management who can take time off, people who live off there websites :P, people who don’t work 9-5. That cuts a lot of people out (I was talking to a few people about this at GeekUp), I think if it becomes a bit more flexible, the attendance numbers should rise and it should be a better morning :).
The divides are getting bigger with each meeting, I think I’m the only one at the moment that has been to both events, that might be just bad advertising or geek snobbery, you can already see at least one person wouldn’t attend the GeekUp! if Imran wasn’t there….Mate, come on…. he’s a good bloke, but you gotta get out on your own! 
The next GeekUp is in 2 weeks and I’m doing a 6 Minute presentation on SEO, hopefully people will like it and I can do some others, (Revenue for the 2.0 site, beating banner blindness, catching clickfraud).
BarCamp Leeds is the one event I hope will bring everyone together and “get this party started”, that’s probably going to be in september but i’ll keep you informed a bit more over the next few weeks.
July 5th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
Hey Dom - sorry you didn’t get much out of this month’s event. It just so happened that people from RDAs, VC and angels were there wand wanted to understand how they could help move the industry forward in the region. There was geekery too with demos from a couple people.
I’m not sure it’s useful to talk about divides and differences at this stage - both communities are very new and will evolve organically.
I’d like to have come to GeekUp and have been bigging it up to everyone I know for some time…unfortunately, I just couldn’t make the first event. It’s nothing to do with snobbery, just timing. I’d be surprised if we don’t see a lot of the same people attending both in the future.
Ian P and I have spent a lot of time in Silicon Valley and Mass Bay - we know that you need geeks, great urban life, investors and good universities to make any tech hub hum, that’s what we’re trying to do…find people from those sectors and give them spaces to play.
Ain’t no cliques here.
July 5th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
I think it is useful to talk about divides if I see them :), I spoke to a few people at geekup who thought that Open Coffee was something something completely different to what it is and that needs to be sorted.
I sort of disagree with your list of things you need, I think you just need a few geeks with a social side and a good attitude, take GeekUp, just a pub room was booked and the masses came :).
I hope you didn’t take offense at the post, I enjoy all events, I don’t go to learn things, I go to meet people (like you and your cousin for example), I did enjoy open coffee and it was my fault I didn’t get a chance to speak to people properly but its difficult to get there on your dinner break (a problem i know a lot of other people are having).
You should come to GeekUp, I’m doing a presentation on SEO and I think Deb’s will be along to this blog shortly to “big it up”… yes I am down with the lingo the crazy kids are using these days
July 5th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
My concern is by talking about divides this early - it actually enables people to polarise when none of us really know what will happen next. I’d hate for people to read this and think only geeks can go to GeekUp and only investors can to to OpenCoffee (BTW, there were only 2 VCs and 1 investor on Tuesday).
What Ian and I plan to do with Carbon is not to have a few cute events like OpenCoffee, BarCamp and Geekup but use these communities as a lever for change.
I’m thinking of a time a few years out from today when Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield and Newcastle are part of a hub of startups, open source projects, invention, creation and wealth that harnesses the talents of the 15m people across the region; a region that was the Silicon Valley of the Industrial era
GeekUp, OpenCoffee and BarCamp aren’t the endpoints of this journey…but the starting points where people find each other, share ideas and collaborate to make insanely great things.
I agree, attitude, sociable people and a pub make for a great event. But our ambitions are to create something enduring - an industry
July 5th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Carbon?, have I missed something, and yes I agree that GU,BC and OC are the start of the up north revolution, I can see us setting something up so that we have an up north version of Search Engine Strategies or other Big conferences, except without the $1200 ticket price.
My talking about the divides was to bring it to the attention that its bollocks to think that way, theres no set agenda at the events so if you have time go, I think theres a need for an “up north” community site, with all the events listed, a forum with subforums for each section, a list of possible events, we are using so many sites at the moment and mailing lists, why don’t we bring everything under one roof?
July 5th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
I agree - got IM?
July 5th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
dominichodgson@gmail.com - gtalk
yorkieonline@hotmail.com - msn
MTGCast - AIM
ducktheresaflyingfish - yahoo
need any more?
July 5th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Hi Dominic (and Imran),
Really interesting to hear what you have to say about the Leeds geek scene at the moment. I’ve not yet had chance to get over to an OpenCoffee event so I’m not best placed to comment (unfortunately, I don’t work in Leeds centre so it’s difficult..) but am really excited that there’s been such a fantastic response for both that and GeekUp - it shows Leeds is looking pretty vibrant right now and perhaps has been shouting out for such events for some time.
Am pretty happy to sit on the fence here (sorry) and say that we shouldn’t pigeon hole either GeekUp or OpenCoffee as being for particular types of people (geeks, investors etc) as indeed both events will benefit from a such a mix.
As Dominic says, I can’t wait for BarCamp, it should help bring a fantastic bunch of people together… Any insider information on when the date’s going to get set? I’ll hopefully be able to chip in with some help in a few weeks time, let me know if there’s anything I can do.
Dominic you are worth “bigging up”
So here it is: everyone should come and see Dominic talk at the next GeekUp, it promises to be informative, fast paced *and* entertaining 
Dave Verwer (of afeeda) will also be speaking about unobtrusive javascript …
July 5th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
I’ve met Dave at BarCamp Sheffield it should be interesting
July 5th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Hoping to make it to the next OpenCoffee, and I would have come to the last one but I was on a training course. So that’ll make another person going to both.
I’ll hopefully make it to the next geekUp, but if it’s on a Wednesday again I have an art group on that day.
I thought the point of having it during the day was so that people who couldn’t do evenings could come and you would get to see some different people. Anyway, I won’t really know till I go.
July 18th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
as a self proclaimed resident of OpenCoffee after attending the first two events (to date), and after attending the second GeekUp tonight ( i was in toronto during the first one ) , i feel qualified to say that both events, while having a different vibe to each other, are well worth visiting! there’s a lot of crossover, and while OpenCoffee may feel slightly more business oriented with it’s early morning meetings compared to the alcohol fueled GeekUps post 6pm, there is a lot of crossover in relation to the topics that arise and discussions that develop.
Personally, i will continue to attend both events as i feel they can exist in harmony, i don’t think any of us see any competition with each other. In a nutshell i would say, “same shit, different beverage”
And Dom, as you say “I think I’m the only one at the moment that has been to both events”, add me to that list