Two – London Silicon Triangle Drinks

The first half past six Meetup took place in West London.  The event, advertised as a ‘drinks for London’s Silicon Triangle’ was hosted in a company that specialised in film and media post production (of which I knew absolutely nothing about).  The Meetup was said to comprise of technologists, investors, entrepreneurs and people who had some kind of connection with the media industry. 

Even though the app ‘chose’ the event, this was an event that I felt that I could handle; I felt that I could talk about some of my ‘day job’ stuff without having to disclose that I was on a mad quest of self-discovery.  This thought made me realise that I needed yet another rule: rule eleven; the honesty rule.  The rule is, ‘tell the organiser why you are at his or her Meetup group at the earliest opportunity’.  The only exception to applying the ‘honesty rule’ is if someone, most likely myself, becomes in physical danger, or full disclosure is likely to significantly upset the dynamics of a group.

A bonus was that I was already dressed for the part.  I wore a relatively smart pair of black jeans and an office shirt, all topped off with a smart looking jacket; I felt confident.  I soon found my destination; a sign advertised I was in the right place.  I pushed an entrance buzzer and heard a crackly ‘hello’.  The door buzzed open.  I immediately found myself standing amongst a group of five or so smartly dressed strangers.

‘Would you like something to drink?’ a voice said.

‘Erm, yes, I’ll have a beer!’ wondering what I was getting myself into.

I soon got chatting with a chap called AJ who described himself as an investor, and Charlie, who was dressed in a smart light brown casual suit, wore a beard and had a very impressive pair of glasses.   

‘So, erm, do you work for a big financing company?’ I asked AJ.  AJ was new to the city and still finding his feet.  I couldn’t really pin him down as to whether he had a job, worked for someone, or in fact had access to any money at all, but he said that he was interested in ‘any opportunities’ and one day hoped to run his own investment fund.  This set Charlie off, who started talking about investments in film, and gave us an anecdote about an ‘off the cuff’ million pound deal that he had heard about when he visited the Cannes film festival.

Charlie was an intense guy, and a little suspicious about the kind of person was drinking his free beer.  ‘Whereabouts in London do you live?’ he asked.  I told him that I lived in South East London.  This threw him. ‘So, what have you got to do with the Silicon Triangle then?’

‘I don’t have anything to do with the Silicon Triangle’ I replied.  In fact, I didn’t really know what this mythical Silicon Triangle was all about.  I needed to say something. ‘Well, I work north of the river, and this is north of the river, and I read the description that the event was all about technology, which is my interest’.  I was annoyed with myself.  I wanted to tell Charlie that I had visited his event ‘by accident’, but I knew saying ‘this is the second event on a quest of one hundred different events’ would sound weird, and he might ask me to leave.

‘North of the river…’ Charlie echoed, digesting my spectacularly vague reason to acquire a free beer.  He thought this over for a moment, and then accepted my explanation.

Since I was ‘a tech guy’, he introduced to the co-owner of the company that was hosting the event, Alan.  Alan was smartly dressed and about my age, and he appeared to be bewildered by the whole event that was taking place in his office.  Alan’s career started in film, and eventually through hard work and persistence, he managed to form his own company with a colleague called Darren.  The slick talking Charlie who I had spoken to moment earlier was, apparently, their new sales manager.  ‘He’s only just started’, Alan explained. ‘We’ve historically got all of our business through word of mouth’.

I was impressed by Alan. I asked him what post-production was all about.  He described the connections they had with film and television companies and the role of editing and visual effects.  ‘Sometimes there are creative tensions’, he said, ‘and sometimes you get the best work out of very different people who spark off each other’.

We moved on to chat about technology.  Alan spoke about a consulting contract that they had with a university which was some kind of government scheme, resulting in some software that they use as a part of the process.  I chanced by arm, and gave Alan one of the two names that I knew from the university he mentioned.  ‘Do you know Steve?  You know, the guy who does stuff with CCTV cameras and sport, trying to get computers to analyse matches?’

‘Yes! I know Steve!  He was in charge of the project when it ran a couple of years ago… How do you know Steve?’

Ten minutes of chatter later, and I found myself in the middle of a very geeky group.  One of the group thrust a mobile phone into my hand with words: ‘this is his product – try it!’  I looked at the phone, and looked up at its proud developer, and looked back at the phone.  It presented a bunch of words on the screen.  ‘What you’ve got to do is choose some of the tags that you’re interested in’.  I clicked on the tag ‘selfDeprecation’.

‘There’s a problem at the moment, which means you’ve got to click on it twice.  Hold on…’  I gave the developer the phone.  He refreshed the screen and gave it back to me.  I could see two coloured circles with some very small numbers that were, to me, completely meaningless.  I had no idea what I was looking at.

‘I want to learn more about self-deprecation, but I don’t think I’m very good at it’ I said; a quip that was ignored.  I continued to look at the screen.  I pressed a couple of other words, and the phone had to be manually refreshed again.  I had still no idea what I was looking at.  There were more circles and numbers.  ‘You’re going to have to give me a bit of context…’ I said, taking a swig from my beer.  The developer looked deflated.  

It turned out that the product was all about finding new social media feeds based on keywords.  You clicked on words, and it would offer you the most relevant feed, and the numbers related to some fancy calculation that was some kind of weight or value.  His plan was to make money through selling subscriptions.  I remained perplexed.

After chatting to the second company owner (who was a very nice chap), he introduced me to the organiser of the Meetup group, John.  John was very charming and had boundless enthusiasm.  He spoke at length about his group, why he set it up, plans that he had for it and one of this other groups.  His groups were mostly about networking, combined with a bit of drinking, but with a heavy emphasis on technology.  We also chatted about technology, how it always changes, what software developers have to know these days to get jobs. 

‘They need to know about Cucumber these days’, he said.  I agreed with him, not really knowing what he was talking about, but vaguely aware that I was learning stuff.

I had arrived at around seven and left, elated, a bit after nine.  They seemed like a really nice group; a combination of business people, chancers, those who were trying to get jobs in the industry, and people who were out for learning new stuff whilst having a friendly chat over a drink.  John said that I would be very welcome to come again.  ‘Every final Thursday of the month – keep an eye out for them, and my other group; come to that one too!’  In retrospect, I should have been cheeky enough to nab another couple of beers.  Next time.