crazybobbles

Yup, facebook napkins!

“Bob has been drinking google, listening to digg and wiping facebook.“

One of my rather cryptic messages I posted on facebook a while ago. Don’t think people really got why I said that, so let me explain in a form of an event I went to. I was invited by Stuart to go check out diggnation, a geeky show talking about articles found on digg hosted by Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht. It was once again, one of my geeky days where I felt like checking out proper nerdy events, even a coworker was going so it had to be worth visiting. The actual event held was talking about Web Apps and whatnot but most people were merely interested in the Diggnation event which was free (and we love free events don’t we!!! YEAH we do!). So yeah, on with the show.

After arriving fashionably late to meet up with Dip and Stu, we started heading off to Excel Custom House via the DLR. I was hoping to bump into a lot of pasty nerds wearing Diggnation T shirts along the way which I did (teehee pasty nerds), most of them bearing iphones and twittering like crazy about the stop they’re at or whatever. We had a discussion about the concentration of iphone users there were at this event and did more stat’ing around, such as the ratio of male and female (more on that later) and the ratio of Mac / PC users. Dip actually went for shits and giggles, twas funny seeing him come to an event that clearly was for nerds only, but it did feel wrong (a good kind of wrong) that our friendly  and loveable emo was attending the show :).

Once at the venue, we were greeted by loads of people in red t shirts who were paid to be super friendly. They’d high five you, welcome you, cheer at you, raise your spirits and would probably hug you if you asked for one. There were loads of them about, which made me wonder who the hell was funding all these people to stand around and simply say hi to people. It was a nice feeling though, sounds like a boring job but what the hell, someone’s paying for it. At the venue there wasn’t much to do, the only thing left open was a Google stand, and the entrance to see Diggnation (more on the google thing later, trust me, it’s awesome). We queued up for Diggnation and nattered about bits and bobs and what the show will talk about, my bets were on the new Apple laptops (nom).

Girl with Apple Logo tatoo'd to her back!

We got in the actual diggnation bit pretty easily, there were loads of seats but it became pretty obvious that it was filling up pretty quickly. We had some pretty far back seats but no matter, it wasn’t exactly a gig haha (you’ll see me darting to the front if it was!) Once sat down that a few rows in front of us was a girl who had a tatoo of the Apple logo on her back. It was hilarious, people were taking photos of her (without her consent, the best kind) and even I got in there to take a quick ninja shot, I was originally going to ask her to pose for me but the timing was a bit crap so I decided not to in the end. Quite a lot of jokes were made about the tatoo, one in particular is when fornicating with a girl with an apple logo tatoo’d on her back, you’d might randomly scream “STEVE JOBS” (CEO of Apple) in the middle of it all. I don’t know if that would turn the girl on or not… anyway, knowing my bad history with talking about people I encountered at the gig and them actually finding my blog and commenting on it, I’ll leave it at that (though tbh that was all we talked about). Stu did say some mean things though haha (his blog is on the sidebar so find him there haha).

As time flew by waiting for the show to begin we noticed something very strange, people were vacating their seats and coming back with a handful beers. We investigated further about what was going on and realised that the Google stand, was in fact a “Google Beers” stand. Now what are they doing in the stand? Nothing but providing everyone with unlimited FREE BEER! (hopefully by saying that you even felt the need to get up to your seat and find out this stand, but alas, this was in the past so unless you have time machine, sit back down :P). Once we realised this attrocious freebie we got dip to go scout for beers. We eventually went ourselves after feeling ever so slightly impatient for free beer. The stall was swarming with people, a closer look and you’d see people behind the stalls frantically unbottling caps and handing it out to people. You’d think there’d be a limit to how many beers a person can have but nope. The only limit was your modesty in how much free stuff you’d like to get from a super big corporate company. The number of bottle caps on the table was ungodly, (would have taken a photo but my hand was filled with beers haha), since the bottles were opened, it wasn’t possible to just cram them into a bag or whatever, so the max I was able to get was 4 bottles (probably could of got more but I didn’t want to get too wasted). It really felt like they had a googleplex of beers under that stall (had to make a googleplex joke hehe). Anyway, 4 bottles was an ok amount to last the entire evening, don’t want to be watching a gig show drunk do we?

We salute you google! Thanks for the free beers!

Back in our seats we piled up the number of free beers we had, me and Dip managed to swipe 4 beers each whilst Stuart came with an appalling two (shame on him!). So with 10 beers to share between 3 we said whoever finished their third bottle will get the last bottle. Dip eventually won the 4th bottle which was good because I didn’t want to have loads of bathroom breaks :(. Anyway, it was nice having big corporate companies providing nerds free stuff, so Google, we salute you!

The show was really funny, a lot of heckling, shouting and screaming was involved. It was quite a nerdy bunch! Not only that, it felt like a proper sausage fest haha. When the guys from diggnation told all the girls to shout, there really wasn’t much screaming coming out from the crowd. It felt so weird going to an event that had such a low female ratio. Anyway, they talked about Google Beers, the new Mac Laptops,  Gmail’s drunk detector for making sure you don’t send unwanted emails while intoxicated and other bits and bobs.

It was a nice event, there were so many geeky references that I and the rest of the crowd got that it made you feel somewhat a bit welcomed. I can’t remember how the show ended but we were then all invited to the aftershow party at a pub. The event was sponsored by…*drum roll* FACEBOOK mwhaha.

Facebook PARTAE!

The pub wasn’t that interesting, there were a lot of facebook merchandise to take (one of which were facebook napkins) but it was just like any other pub. Later on, Kevin and Alex arrived and I was able to say hi to Kevin (I think I literally said hi and went haha). We decided to leave (after a toilet break) since nothing was happening but as we were heading to the toilets for a wee Kevin and Alex appeared behind the DJ desk with mics talking the crowd, they were about to play a game with the audience!

Kevin and alex asking the crowd which month and year Diggnation began

The timing couldn’t be any better since I was stood literally in front of them. They were constantly throwing Digg branded bottle openers and T shirts (managed to grab one) and yeah, they asked some pretty hard questions about Digg where the winners would get super prizes handed to them if they got it right (they weren’t that awesome mind). It wasn’t that interesting but having loads of nerds heckling was quite a sight to see hehe. I wasn’t able to take a good shot of the guys during the Diggnation event but I was able to do so now. After the show that pretty much was it, we decided to call it a day and left the area to go home (well we did end up in a boat for a bit but it was boring so we left).

So yeah, that was my day where I was drinking Google Beers, listening to Diggnation and wiping my face with Facebook. Suddenly all these events are making me feel more and more nerdy! (Though the abundance of music gigs and art shows should hopefully cancel it out!)