It's only fitting that my first post for the year is around something that probably framed the year for me. I went through to Geekretreat 2009 and it was great, there were a bunch of us that got together talk about a bunch of stuff, and then partied. A lot of fun, and interesting, however it may have missed the origional purpose that the triad of Heather Ford, Justin Spratt and Eve Dmochowska were trying to convey.

Although excited about the retreat, I went with an initial feeling that maybe, due to workload or focus, my time could possibly have been spent better staying in JHB and closing down some projects that are deadlining for the end of January. It became clear quickly that the retreat was very different from last year. A large part I contribute to a mental space, an understanding of what to expect, better focused topics, and a theme running through of a focus on technology in education.

Various projects were showcased which peaked interest:

* P2PU - A peer-to-peer university project with a focus on informal education, run over the internet, with set syllabus.
* Cognician - A software based thinking guide that walks through the structure of a problem to enabled critical and systemic thought.
* Personera - An interesting project that piggyback's on Facebook in order to put together a profile of pictures etc, in order for you to create personalised calendars, wallpaper or gifts.

There were also a number of incredible conversations which were started.

* Andy Volk did a presentation on how his group runs a services based company, which also develops product. A model that several of us at the retreat had been looking at as a way to fund product without the involvement of venture capital.

* Stefan Magdalinski showed us how he liberated government data and handed it to the people who own the data, the people.

More important than the presentations and the projects were the connections made, made between people in the NGO space, and the education space with others that can help them. There have been a few projects that have rolled out of this. Resources have been allocated, and the geeks are helping each other wherever possible.

This retreat was one of binding a community around a purpose, the organisers should be proud. The people were amazing, and the outputs are good. What happens now is up to the participants, the connectors have done a fine job of putting the right people together, and I'm honoured to have been included.

External links:

From Cognician - http://cognician.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/geekretreat/ http://cognician.ning.com/profiles/blogs/geekretreat-an-inspirational
Elaine Rumboll's Blog
Eve D's Blog
Peter Flynn's Blog
Jarred Cinman's vies on the retreat