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Bill Thompson is a ‘controversialist’ – at least according to The Guardian – and pioneer of new media in the UK. Founder of The Guardian’s New Media Lab in the mid 1990’s, he ran the world’s first live Webcast from the ICA in 1994, created the first Website for an elected representative within the EU (Anne Campbell, 1995) and ran the first and so far only online debate for the Prime Minister’s Office (Nexus, 1997). Now he writes and talks about this stuff.
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The Sixth Great Geek Punt Picnic: PuntCon IV

Cambridge, Sunday July 13, 2008

The Event

After the undoubted success of our earlier ventures, we're going to head off up river again on Sunday July 13.

The Invite

You are invited to PuntCon IV, or the sixth great geek punt picnic, to take place on or about the River Cam on the afternoon of Sunday July 13th 2008. We will be heading upriver rather than along the backs - more picnic places, fewer tourists.

As before, turn up outside the Mill public house on Mill Lane between 1200 and 1230. We will head off by 1300 - if you are late you can walk up river and catch us as we don't punt very fast!

Bring something to drink and something to eat.

I will provide bread, plates, cutlery, glasses and more food/drink

We will take as many punts as we need [one for every six people] and head up river to a convenient picnic place [eg Grantchester Meadows] where we will eat/drink/carouse. If we all bring wifi laptops then we can also have our social software event and blog the result :-)

Post punting we have the option of retiring to the pub and letting Sunday evening happen around us.

Punt cost will be split between all comers - works out around GBP2.00 an hour per person.

Why PuntCon?

Conferences are fun, but don't have ducklings. Or champagne. So the legendary Geek Punt Picnic has morphed into PuntCon, the Cambridge leg of the alternative conference circuit.

In keeping with tradition there will be no talks, no presentations, no agenda and nothing to disturb the quiet delights of the river on a Sunday afternoon. But apart from that, it's a conference and therefore probably tax-deductible.

What happened in previous years?

This Flickr photoset should give you all the informaton needed.

The RSVP

Let me know if you're up for it, but come along even if you didn't. Bring friends as the event is scalable - let me know approx numbers if you can be bothered. Email me at bill@andfinally.com for more.

The Invitees

Please feel free to invite other people - it's a big river and there are lots of punts. It would be nice (but is by no means essential) if I had a rough idea of numbers in advance so I know how much bread to get, but there's a Sainsburys five minutes walk away anyway...

How to Get There

The event takes place at Scudamore's Boatyard, at the corner of Mill Lane and Granta Place, Cambridge. Google will tell you it's here, Multimap puts it thus.

Coming Up

See Also...

The BillBlog

Digital Planet

BBC News

w4mp

Cambridge Film Festival podcast

openDemocracy

BBC Webwise

City University

Children's Books

VoxPolitics

www.flickr.com
This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from BillT. Make your own badge here.

Contact Bill

Email me at bill@andfinally.com or find out what I'm up to or where I came from. You can also read a short biography, 'My Life as a New Media Dog'

This site

This is the old version of the site, left here so that links don't get broken. Please don't rely on anything you read here being up to date - go to the home page at http://www.andfinally.com/ for current information

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