£5 App Write-up (6 demos at our Demo Camp)

What a fab night!  I counted 46 people which makes this possibly the largest event we’ve thrown – thanks to all for attending.  Sponsored beer, live Qik video, 6 great talks and lively post-event pub conversation – who could ask for a better evening?  Josh made this rather excellent panoramic view of us all:

Each of the 6 talks lasted 15 minutes and covered a wide range of geek and tech-business topics:

• ‘Google Maps + GPS + Python + Series 60 + giant pencil == live biking location demo’, Tristan Roddis (CogApp)
• LiquidFold using Google’s App Engine, Simon Willison & Natalie Downe
• “An airport that you can turn-off” – evolvable flight-paths for crash-resistant landing vectors at a major airport, Matt Sarjent
• ‘Pistach.io: a cracking idea! [blog-based advertising platform, new start-up]’, Aral Balkan and Dave Stone
• AllSizes+ – hacking flickr with GreaseMonkey, Premasagar Rose (of Dharmafly)
• ‘Inuda’s first public app [howsociable.com – brand metrics company side-project]… after two years of ‘Innovating’ alongside client work’, Jon Markwell and Kev The Dev

Ribot both sponsored the event (great beer – thanks!) and made live Qik video streams for the evening.  I believe these segments are correct:

1. Video 1 – quick intro from John and myself
2. Video 2 – Tristan’s Python Series 60 demo starts
3. Video 3 – Tristan concludes, full talk for Simon and Matt (followed by break)
4. Video 4 – Second half – Premasagar, Dave, Jon+Kev

The Ribots also sponsored the beer, they skinned the bottles to show three stages of the design process:

More images can be found tagged in flickr and via the fivepoundapp homepage.  If you’ve a question about the night then come join the FivePoundApp google group.  Finally – thanks to Danny for hosting and to John for yet more great cake.

Possible talks for the next event could include something about ClearLeft’s SilverBack, a Chumby demo and Seb’s postponed Arduino hardware hacking.  I’d love to see some more internal-company demos/start-ups/proto-projects, please ping if you’d be interested in talking.

Addition – great write-up at Ribot HQ, including discussion of how and why they branded their sponsored beer..