Bristol Open Cofee III

In town for an annual facilities renewal meeting with HSBC so headed on over to the excellent Watershed for Bristol Open Coffee III.

Simon Bunker has taken on the mantle of organiser / coordinator and did a fantastic job with the catering as you can see. Might not have been so good had we not gatecrashed the BEN event that coincidentally was taking place in the room next door!

About 50% of the attendees segued into the BEN event (too hot and too many suits) but I stuck with the splinter group in the bar.

As Mr Shiner was with me there was of course much talk of Open Source and he promised to return armed with laptop for a show and tell of our enterprise build at a future meet.

Other themes: a clear consensus hummed around the theme of SAP generally being a waste of cash for SME's; Simon's Nokia N95 looked like a pretty tempting piece of kit that connected without hassle to the free WiFi at the Watershed; and a discussion about Twitter swerved from the "never heard of it" to "I am addicted". Oh, and that Severn Delta's elevator was spot on.

It was good to meet Tom Holder and Mark Panay from SimpleWeb, Gary Wilson from Coull, and John Bradford in addition to Simon. I'll definitely be making this a regular gig, its only 20 minutes from home so it would be rude not to, particularly now that I know that it morphs into open curry...

Also I am in an inquisitive place right now and open to new ideas and opportunities. We have three projects in the incubator already, but there is room for more.

There is a reason why I take my Accountant with me to these things!