This evening I spent a few hours at the Gadget, Games & Geeks techfest at a conference centre near my work. Hosted by Unlimited Potential and NZWireless, it’s a little mini conference with some displays and a few talks, a bit of social networking and a few drinks and some nibblies.
There was not as much gadgets as I’d hoped for – I got to have a look at an Apple TV and some fancy blackberry acessories as well as completely failing to win an Apple iPod. The talks were quite good, a bit of food for thought – although I did have a moment of irritation during a talk given by a representative of a company that develops games. In the question and answer session a woman asked him about women gamers – and he managed to bring up the women = ‘casual non-gamers who might like something like a wii’ stereotype AND mention barbie games in the same paragraph. Sure, plenty of women probably do like that sort of thing – but it’s an insult to girl gamers to suggest that ‘real’ women gamers don’t exist.
There was also an interesting presentation on Open Solaris – looks like it’s going to interesting places. I’d like to have a play with ZFS.
Afterwards, it was lovely catered food and a bit of milling about. I had an interesting chat with someone from a recruitment firm at the state of the market at the moment – and then it was off home to look up the interesting websites that had been brought up in presentations.
All in all a fun evening.
