DigiCluster at Watford Town Hall

Peter Carr and I went from Harpenden to Watford for the evening networking gathering at a new venue, Watford Town Hall, and fortunately the car Park we have used on previous occasions was familiar territory, but the journey’s navigation was provided by Peter as he sat beside me with a GPS app on his new iPhone. Peter seems determined to test my knowledge of the car’s width by choosing a route involving the narrowest of restrictive traffic-calming roads, and I invariably gently nudge the kerb as I pass through –  perhaps he considers this to be the price to pay for doing the navigating for me!

Despite early crowded roads as we left Harpenden, we made fairly reasonable time and were certainly not the latest of arrivals. As we left the car park we met a fellow delegate, who had already done a complete circuit of the building searching for the correct entry, and the door we selected for entry proved to be correct so we all entered and signed in! Obviously yet another navigation test; and we passed.

We were treated to cups of tea or coffee before entry to the hall where we were welcomed by Manny Lewis. From there Syd Nadeem took over to introduce our speakers with a brief synopsis from their LinkedIn Profiles, which later was to gives all a laugh when introducing Howard Hughes with a brief History of his namesake, but the profile was from way before Linked In was even dreamed of! It did mean Chris Farthing was let off lightly, but later in conversation he did own up to a girlfriend named Penny!

The discourses from the Speakers was concerning the recent free WiFi link to Watford Town Centre, and Introduction to G-Cloud, the Internet of Things and the means whereby data could be streamed vast distances very much faster from embedded sensors that had long lives due to much lower consumption or even from being solar-powered. There was also a short Q&A session and some short videos to get the messages across, We were also introduced to much improved methods of procurement with much shorter lead times and fewer restrictions and were invited to consider taking a look at the new means of tendering that was now available.

At the end of this session, we were once again treated to a selection of Pizzas and a range of drinks as we then spoke to the speakers and amongst our fellow colleagues. I hope that the pictures I took give a taste of the evening, though the blog does not proved smells and flavours. I did make an observation, I learned that Josh Bolland’s listening stance is a precursor to launching both his body arms and hands when he is ready to launch int animated speech, so for your added delectation, I give you this ‘tell’:

When you see this stance you know he is listening, and is tightly coiled ready to launch into an answer…