One for Catweazle Club

It's almost ironic that I was asked to post it tonight - on the day when I really, really wanted to move away from writing all about myself. Well, I guess if I write down my own experience of Catweazle Club I might attempt to explain its uniqueness.

There is a lot of background information to this story, but to cut it short let me only tell you that about 4 years ago I have separated from someone who actually asked me to come to the UK with him and who is the dad of my son. Now, as a result of the separation I have spent about a year at home with my at the time one year old son spending my evenings on activist blogging and building of my personal blogger brand on-line. I have however put aside most of my artistic activities and I have not moved out apart from few occasions related to work or social media events. I was alone, though not really isolated. Happy to live and work in the quiet little town of Wantage with an amazingly happy little boy. Yet, I felt really, really lots. Let's face it - my entire plan of a happy family, new life in England and new job in social media marketing have failed. I was on my own, not really in position to discover anything, pretty much restricted by my at the time vague job position.

Few of my close friends encouraged me to continue my photo exhibitions and I think it was my only artistic activity at the time, I have to admit though that exhibiting photography can be pretty isolating - people do not even talk to the artist! One of my friends thought a bit more about my feelings at the time and decided to introduce me to Catweazle Club...

I will not tell you what Catweazle is about. It means various things to many people. To me, the first time I went there I felt I was at home: in the place I was trying to establish between my own four walls, failed and re-discovered elsewhere. Why? I am not sure. Sometimes it's the warmth of the place. Sometimes its unpredictability - so close to my own nature. Or maybe the contrast between the fast, noisy and messy life I was living and trying to clear my thoughts and feelings, games we play and lies we tell and this almost hilarious reality of Catweazle Club performances. The truth we forget to speak of:

Today my life is different. Better. Happier. Today I know that what I thought of Catweazle Club at the time really applies to the entire Oxford - openness, variety of life philosophies, painful honesty, art and clear value of relationships. And I go back to Catweazle Club with the same feeling of warmth and almost addictive need to hear, feel, experience more of it - more of people, their stories, their small mistakes and huge achievements, in this ordinary, weekly dosis of Oxford magic.

There, it was supposed to be your story, and yet I hope it still is.

Oxford Girl Geek Dinner - Launching

I know, I posted about it ages ago;) And yes, we did have our first event, however we treated it as a pre-launch, basically initial meeting. But before I tell you more about the launch event, let me remind you the basics (taken from  central website):

The Girl Geek Dinners were founded on the 16th August 2005 as a result of one girl geek who got annoyed and frustrated about being one of the only females attending technical events. She was tired of being assumed to be marketing, tired of constantly having to prove herself and decided that she just wanted a change and to be treated just the same as any other geek out there, gender and age aside.  After all to be geeky is to be intelligent, have passion for a subject and to know that subject in depth. It’s not at all about being better than others, or about gender, race, religion or anything else. Those things just detract from the real fun stuff, the technology, the innovation and the spread of new ideas.

So what did this geeky girl do to change the world of geeks and girl geeks everywhere… well she got in touch with a few well known bloggers, posted online about her idea of getting geeks to educate one another over dinner and then arranged the first girl geek dinner event with a little help from her friends. The first event had 35 people at it all from London and the surrounding area, shortly after people started to hear about the events and companies started sponsoring them to cover the food and drinks cost.

Then they started popping up in other UK cities as she trained others up in how to run the events, spreading the formula for them… so they then started popping up in Europe… and shortly after that over in Canada… Now they are starting to pop up in New Zealand and Australia. Who knows where will be next.

Our Mission Statement:

To break down old fashioned social stereotypes.




To identify routes around barriers to entry for anyone to get into technology.




To encourage and nurture those interested in technology.




To work with local schools, colleges and universities to encourage more women into the technology industry.




To support those currently in the industry and work together to figure out the issues and the solutions.




To include men, women and children in this journey…. and not exclude men from Girl Geek Dinner Events

Now, Girl Geek Dinners is a series of events currently active in many parts of UK, Europe and the globe, so I am really happy to see it kicking off in Oxford as well. On Tuesday, at 6PM we are meeting in Cowley Rd, at White October offices (thank you for sponsoring us, once again!) to discuss personal branding on-line, various tools for social media marketing and to network. Later on int he evening we will move to Cafe Tarifa for sponsored (by Oxford Innovation) drinks and further chat with live music in the background. I really hope this small but crucial for women in technology event will take off and turn into a regular occasion to share experiences, tips and business cards;)

Join us on Twitter! To attend our Tuesday event go to the event page here. Really hope to see you there (boys are more then welcome, you just need to find a girl who will join you;)).

Matt Sage and the Catweazle Club

www.mattsage.com

We are all citizens of the world, yet we grow into our communities through the people we meet. Matt Sage is an inspiration for me, together with the Catweazle Club he is hosting since 15 years (!!!) every Thursday in Oxford, but organised also in Brighton, London and New York. The Catweazle Club has been extremely supportive inviting artists and performing at Oxford Twestival for Mali sanitation project run by Oxfam in 2010 - despite of the fact that their own event was happening on the same day down the road! I met Matt today again to discuss collaboration between the two events once again, in March 2010. And who knows, maybe for Oxfam once again - it looks like they are winning in our Oxford Twestival poll for the local charity.

But down to the point! Matt is a musician himself (I strongly advice you to at least listen into his works on his site, if not download it on iTunes). Here is his own contribution to the water topic:

This post is a part of TH!NK 3 European Blogging Competition. You will find the original post here.

Open Data Hackathon Oxford

Open Data Hackathon is still happening! This international event aims to gather geeks around specific ideas giving them really only one day to develop at least a draft project. I had a bit hectic day today, but I did manage to visit and blog about the Oxford event on their dedicated site here.

Kevin from White October commented on the event twice:





What I personally like about it (apart from the great venue provided by White October and brilliant atmosphere of Oxford geeks) are the results:

• Robin Hood Tax viz - Demo site Exploring the impact of Robin Hood taxes - also Geodata Demo of RHT Data.


• Arts funding viz - Demo Site Tags demo site Stacks of cash demo site Using data about Arts Council funding, this team is visualizing where and to who the funding has been awarded.


• Twitter geo sentiment - Who is happy (or otherwise) on Twitter based upon where they are and comparing different locations.


• World Bank data - Using World Bank data so that someone can enter a location and find Word Bank projects or other projects if there is data for it, near them.


• Local transport - Tracking the location of Oxford buses using the data from Oxontime. Temporary demo on Google Maps


• dbpedia/Ordnace Survey Open Data - Map Demo site Using @gothwin's work for Ordnance survey and dbpedia to geolocate you with your postcode and finds something interesting nearby from dbpedia..."It makes Blue Plaques for you wherever you are"


• CKAN - Demo site Using the data.gov CKAN API to see the top 15 tags to see the relationships between the packages.

As you can see great stuff! Really happy that I could get involved at least this way, so thanks to the organisers for the invitation!