Have you tried coming across to the Manchester GeekUp? Each of the local “Chapters” have their own, very distinct flavour, and what you’re describing is the Manchester GeekUp

I definitely don’t want to stop you from running your own event, but maybe it’d be worth jumping on the GeekUp mailing list (if you’re not already) or getting across to the Manchester event, just to see how it flows at the moment (which is pretty much, everyone rocks up sits down and chats, and then heads off when they’re ready). Sometimes we have games nights (people bring along Wii’s, Wiimotes and games), quiz nights (thanks Dan Hardiker!), Werewolf games and others, but mostly people just end up chatting

I don’t know whether I can make it across to Sheffield any time soon, but I hope I’ll meet up with you at GeekUp Manchester!

Jon

It’ll be great to see you there. Make sure you find me at some point during the evening and if I start talking technical make some excuse about going to the bar or something and find someone more interesting to talk to ;o)

Saul

Catherine pointed me at this site because I am doing a masters in HCI / usability and often complain that geeky events do not talk enough about the effect of their efforts on the end user!

Have to admit that I don’t understand any of your three potential talking points. The first suggests a program that auto changes your bank account when the interest rate changes. While that sounds a fun way to keep the banks on their toes but I suspect it would result in total chaos of people inbetween full service, waiting for debit cards, oneline banking access and direct debits being passed over. And that assumes everything goes without a hitch!

The second & third I had to Google. Both seem to be perfect topics for GeekUps because they are about technical solutions and programming.

I’ll come along anyway because I enjoy a good natter about the state of the web and love to talk about abuses of usability over a pint.

I’ve found that it tends to be quite techy – not a problem for me as I love a bit of technology, but there is so much more to talk about and so many people in Sheffield who want to talk about design, UX, IA, user testing, entrepreneurship, governance, social web concepts, engagement.

Lot’s of those people are put off by the techy meet-ups and just like to get together and talk.

Anyway – I hope you can make it along on Thursday. If you do, say hello!

- utility banking services. What would happen if the ‘lock-in’ was removed from financial services. We could all have an agent that changed our loans/savings/insurance/banking providers according to to the criteria that we cared about (ethics, risk, interest rate, etc).

- Who is going to win the friends list ownership battle FB connect, Cliqset, Google Contacts and how do we make sure that it is Open Stack based.

- Migrating from portlets to OpenSocial gadgets – is anyone doing this?

Has anyone got there own list of stuff to talk about?