Yesterday’s Open Coffee event held at Origin Roasting in Cape Town was a great success. I met some really interesting people and put faces to a few names I’ve come across online for a while. A little before the event I met with Callum Macdonald from Scotland who’s graced our shores with his nomadic presence for a few months. Very interesting guy indeed. Callum is amoung other things a blogger, web developer and nomadic entrepreneur with an interesting outlook on life and work. He’s the first person I’ve seen actually wearing a pair of black spot sneakers though I’ve read about them online quite a few times. We chatted a bit about business, life and even religion.
Callum has gotten a WordPress Meetup project on the go, something we’ve all wanted for a while but have been too lazy to organize ourselves. He tells me he has plans to do a Cape to Cairo Trek in the near future.
I met an American Philosophy Professor as well who shared his world view with us using a few very big words and some little ones in new and interesting ways, always good to know how others see things.
I also met a Dutchman, Frans, who is an open source enthusiast and uses open source technologies to assist NGOs with their projects.
Tim Shier was one of the organisers and it was also good to final shake hands in person and share a few words. As usually Dave Duarte was around checking out the scene and a few other online marketing and development types.
Henk from Skyrove handed out free Skyrove credits worth 50megs which was welcome on the day as I had a few things to send off and download.
I met a really nice guy who was preparing the coffee called Ghee, which he told me means humility. He’s from Congo and said he was pleasantly surprised that I spoke to him and ask his name even. C’mon people, where’s the Love?
Business cards were shared and lots of networking and bouncing around of ideas of all types. All in all a great success. I think I might have had a little too much coffee though. Maybe we should start an Open Orange Juice or something :).
