I spent yesterday at the launch of BBC backstage and it was a thoroughly enjoyable day. I'm always a little nervous before heading to these sort of events, never entirely sure who I'm going to meet and always a little wary that I'm going to end up sat next to one of the Slashdot trolls.

No such misfortune though, in fact quite the reverse. There were some excellent speakers and I was pleasantly surprised with just how many top-folk I met. Ben Metcalfe did an excellent job, gave a great talk and has started something pretty special at the BBC. I was proud to find that Ben Hammersly, author of the latest O'Reilly book on RSS and Atom was actually a Brit and I was lucky enough to get to talk to Jeremy Z. for quite a while on both Friday at the geek dinner and Saturday. Not sure he felt quite as lucky but it was certainly good for me. If you get a chance to meet him make sure you listen - he's a smart feller.

Spent most of the evening chatting and getting drenched by rain with Richard Livsey and Ed Dowding. Good chaps and working on an interesting and very useful project. The three of us ended up hooking up with more of the BBC-folk and hitting a not-very-nearby Nepalese restaurant. It was good and its beer was better still - Kathmandu. If you get the chance, try it. Rather amazingly it actually tastes of Kathmandu and even more amazing is that that turns out to be a good thing.