Mike Little’s Journalized

The second meeting of UPA North took place last night at Cafe Muse in the Manchester Museum. It wasn’t as well attended as the first meeting in January, but there were some familiar faces as well as some new; Hi Roy!.

I arrived early and grabbed myself a sandwich and coffee before wandering around to shake a few familiar hands and say ‘Hi’ to some new faces. People continued to drift in for the next half an hour or so.

Dave Hawdale kicked of the meeting giving us some interesting and occasionally amusing ‘internet’ related facts from recent news, before introducing the nights guest speaker: Louise Ferguson.

Louise introduced herself and her subject ‘Ethnography’. Her talk was very interesting, if a little rushed. It was clear she had a lot more to say on the subject than time allowed. I felt she could have got some of her points across more easily with concrete examples, but she seemed determined to skirt around job specifics and client details. Louise finished with a brief question and answer session.

After another ’shameless self-promotion’ session (which I bottled again!), Dave gave a round-up and mentioned some ideas for the next couple of meetings. He is trying to arrange a couple of speakers on Accessibility which should be very interesting.

Afterwards a small group of us retired to Kro Bar where we all chatted about all kinds of stuff; from music and record collections, to the Semantic Web and social software, to museum exhibits, categorization, folksonomies, and more. Talking to Louise, it sounds like there are some interesting things afoot, UK-centered for a change.

I think everyone gained something positive from the night. Some useful contacts were made and even some tentative agreements made for the future.