I'm sure nobody else is going to blog about this....[/sarcasm]
Went to the fourth instance of Danny Choo and Andrew Shuttleworth's hipster networking event tonight. It was fun, I guess, but the more I get to know everybody there, the more I realize that I'd rather hang out with ten or twenty of them at a bar than 150 at a big event like this. Fun times, though, and I won some kind of Star Wars figure by arm-wrestling Jonny Li.
I feel like CGM night has always had a little bit of an identity crisis- it doesn't know whether it wants to be a secondary Tokyo 2.0, a benkyoukai (勉強会), or a big party. The Tokyo tech community is getting kind of incestuous, and I feel like it would be good to find a purpose for all of us greater than just "networking." Bar Camp seems like a step in the right direction, but I'd also love to see events along the lines of Japanese benkyoukai- an hour or two of serious, participatory, sit-down presentations and discussions, followed by a trip to an izakaya where everybody can seriously cut loose. I like hanging out with techie people and taking pictures of each other in a masturbatory DSLR orgy, but we need to focus our energy on something meaningful if we want this community to become a sustainable, productive thing. We've got awesome people with awesome skills and experience- let's use them!
