I definitely made one or two interesting connections. Karl is an impressive guy. He’s 16 years old and maintains a gaming server network of 628 servers. He and his dad run the business with one other technician. Impressive for 16.

The overall feel was very corporate. A lot of guys in suits. Initially only 1 woman before Zara and Jason’s wife arrived. I wonder if that’s typical of the tech scene in Sydney. I hope it’s a more mixed bag. I’m on the lookout for a few more events to check out.

It was an interesting evening. Pizza was generously provided by Butler’s Pizza. If I’m not mistaken their delivery staff arrive wearing a tuxedo shirt (whatever it’s called) and a bow tie! Fantastic. Drinks were supplied by Joyent (I think I got the link right).

There were a few interesting presentations.  Jacques Marneweck spoke about memcache. He looked pretty nervous, but had some interesting things to say. He talked about starling, a memcache based queue server developed by Twitter and some other highly techy stuff. His slides were missing due to a format issue. I think the slides would really have helped the presentation, maybe he’ll post them online.

I’m meeting a few of the same people at most of the tech events in Cape Town. There seems to be a few interesting businesses going on down here. It feels like a small tech community, with a few “big fish”. Reminds me of Edinburgh.

Internet at the event was generously provided by Henk from Skyrove. Skyrove have an interesting business model. They manage internet hotspots and revenue share with the venues who host the hotspots. Bandwidth is outrageously expensive in South Africa, so Skyrove are also a little pricey.

However, Skyrove have undoubtedly gone up in my estimation since I met Henk. When accessing the internet through Skyrove hotspots he pays as an ordinary user, so that the venue get their revenue share. It’s nice to meet ethical business people.

From the meeting we spawned a Cape Town WordPress meetup. I’ve started a mailing list and a blog. I chose Google Groups to host the mailing list, much to my distress. I simply cannot find a good alternative. If you know of one, please put me out of my Google misery!

The fantastic performance was followed by a little fireworks display, of which you can see a sample below. Click the image for a few more…