L to R – Eric Moon, Ryan Consell, Charlotte Armstrong
I’ve been meaning to get to Nerd Nite KW for quite a while now, and finally succeeded on Wednesday night. I saw Nerd Nite boss Charlotte Armstrong give a talk earlier in the week at Speakeasy Live and she had so much enthusiasm for marine science I resolved to sort out my inertia and contribute. The TL;DR: 50’ish nerds packed into The Rum Runner and heard three short, great, funny, and enlightening talks, drank beer, ate food, and most importantly connected. Great energy. High-fives definitely warranted here for all the hard work putting it all together. This is what community looks like.
Click through for a moderately unreasonable number of photos…
And now the top halves: Eric Moon, Ryan Consell, Charlotte Armstrong – the Nerd Nite KW trio of power and awesomeness. Please note Charlotte’s… extra arms (not tentacles because they don’t retract).
Once again… work in Waterloo, play in Kitchener. A heads-up on the venue, this building (including the Walper above) was sold last summer and rent for The Rum Runner is rumoured to have tripled so the pub is moving just around the corner to 33 Queen St. S. where Misty Mountain Coffee used to be. Follow Nerd Nite on twitter for the latest, or get on their email list to stay in the loop.
Looking for the room, I saw a projection of what I assume is the ISS so I figured I was in the right place…
And I knew my pal…
Agnes Niewiadomski of Agnes Makes was…
on scene doing some felting(?) throughout the show, creating a plushie cephalopod to be raffled off at the end of the night.
And where Agnes is, you often find the ever-lovin’, kwartzlab-directin’, hardware-designin’ Mr. James Bastow (left). His housemate, Dan, looking remarkably like my buddy Tim, was also in the mix. There was no real danger of me eating James’ nachos, but seeing that look, I kept my distance anyway.
Oh, and other people were there, too.
Lots of them.
Our evening’s MC: Anna Beard who I happily run into also at Speakeasy, DIYDAY, Grand Porch Party, and sometimes just on King Street. You might know her from The Cord Community Edition…
speaking of which, up to the stage for a hello was The Cord Community Edition Editor In Chief, Hayley Watson.
Got a…
drink? Ok, then over to…
Eric Moon, who gave a very entertaining talk on…
beards.
The round-up included beard physiology, history, sociology, fashion… suffice to say: many dimensions of the man-face-hair. It made me miss my summer beard.
Take 5!
New friend, Lisa Hagen (left).
Editor H.G. Watson, working in the pub. I aspire to get one of those CCE Community stickers.
Snacks!
Anna called Charlotte to the stage to talk about…
Cephalopods.
Charlotte loves many sea creatures, particularly cephalopods and engaged us with photos and videos and great descriptions that among other things…
characterized dolphins as jerks for (partially) eating cephalopods.
Then there seemed to be even more people in the house.
Then Ryan executed a jiu jitsu move on James… ok, not really. JB was actually just picking a prize out, having won a raffle draw. Hey, maybe I could do a talk on my totally-out-of-context private interpretation of photos I’ve taken.
Progress on the felted sea creature…
fuelled by Guinness.
More raffle drawing; no martial arts.
Cool keyboard backlight.
Intentional lens flare.
James’ raffle prize was a book on armour, and speaking of armour…
what’s this? Could it be? The work of Kayleigh Willey: a paper doll of…
Mr. Ryan Consell, our third speaker who…
wrapped up the night talking us through Hollywood’s use and abuse of armour in movies. You’ll remember Ryan from Flirting with the Arts where he had makers banging our their own designs. Ryan was at Waterloo Mini-Maker Faire back in June, demo’ing metal forming and promoting his very cool Dragonsmith Armoury. He may remember *me* as the annoying makebright guy in the adjacent tent making noise for Project Loud Monkey.
A lot of thought and prep obviously went into these talks and the event overall. As I was heading out, before the trivia portion of the night kicked off, Charlotte asked if I would give a Nerd Night talk some time. Of course… I think that’s how this all works.
DW
Kayleigh @Marbles24 from lickingdarkness.com did the amazing Ryan Consell paper doll. Badass!