Yesterday UKUUG and the government (in form of data.gov.uk) held Opentech 2010. It was the usual mixture of very thin hirsute and bald overweight (that would be me) men and a suprisingly respectable amount of respectable women. The nutter index was unusually low and the questions asked during the Q&A session were all exceedingly sensible.

Highlight of the day was without question a joint session with my favourite media geek, the indomitable Bill Thompson and the CEO of environmental consultancy AMEE. Unsurprisngly, the chap from AMEE wanted us to do something to preserve the future, while Uncle Bill (who, btw, does his best work for the best podcast on the web, Radio New Zealand’s ‘This way up‘) wanted us to lobby the media to preserve the the slowly decaying content of their archives. Fair enough.

OpenTech resembled your typical male geek: excellent intellectual content with a shambolic exterior. The cafe didn’t deliver, people didn’t get their food, the place looked like a bomb exploded and there were no facilities (apart from a nearby pub) to make oneself comfy and discuss php with one’s peers.

If they could that right, I am sure the guest list might look even better, and the attendance would go up as well. Nevertheless, Opentech delivered. A bit like a slightly smelly IT-chap in a dirty thinkgeek t-shirt popping around your workplace and fixing your printer, while making surprisingly intelligent conversation about data mining and role playing games.