This month the Birmingham.pm Technical Meeting, is hosting a visit from Belfast.pm. Karen and I talked some time ago, that it would be nice to do an exchange trip. They could come to Birmingham and we could go to Belfast, exchanging talks at our respective technical meetings. May was the month best for them, and we're hoping to arrange a trip over to Belfast in either October or November.
Marty has agreed to do 2 talks, the first is his GNU Guerilla talk I saw on the Perl Whirl and the second is a Perl6/PUGS/Haskell talk, to which I have still to discover the title or the content! Marc Kerr has also offered to talk to us, personal commitments willing, but again I haven't seen the title or content. With Karen, Tony and Andrew coming along too, it should be a fun packed evening. There should be at least 2 talks from the Birmingham crew, Brian being be one, but the other is open to discussion at the moment.
Unfortunately QPC are no longer able to support us by allowing us use their venue or equipment for the foreseeable future. We knew this would happen eventually, so we have been on the look out for an alternative venue. Thankfully there are 4 within the city centre that have adequate size function rooms. We've settled on O'Neills, as it used to be our social meeting venue, so we know it, and they are willing to let us pre-order food.
The only downer is that none of the venues have a projector. We have been trying to buy one on eBay, but keep getting outbid. We do have access to an LCD projector panel and OHP, but the LCD panel only has a 640x480 resolution. Thankfully I have managed to successfully bid and win a better LCD projector panel on eBay, but we are still hoping we can borrow a projector. I have just spoken to the seller of the LCD projector panel and hopefully (fingers crossed and everything) he should be able to get it to us by Wednesday lunchtime.
I'm really looking forward to the meeting on Wednesday, mostly because I get to see the Karen and the crew from Belfast, but also I get to listen to Marty and Marc do some great talks. The Damian's and MJD's of this world might be probably the best speakers around. But for pure entertainment value, Marty and Marc come top by a long shot. That's not to say they aren't good speakers, because they are. But maybe it's the Irish outlook or something, but they have a way of presenting that is rather like storytelling. You're hooked to see what the ending is. Though with Marty you don't always get to hear that anyway, as he often runs out of time :)
If you're in the area on Wednesday, please feel free to come along and say hello.
