[wplug] What is Geek Night (was: re: something about RMS speaking)

[Dave Neuer]

--- Cameron McBride <cameron.mcbride at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Whoever set this up is obviously out of touch.
> That's Geek Night.
> > Granted, it doesn't get the attendance it used to,
> the two events are
> > still in direct competition.
> 
> what's "Geek Night"?
> 
> Cameron

It used to be a bi-monthly gathering of people in the
IT industry sponsored by recruiters who paid for free
beer at the soon-to-close Foundry Ale House so that
they could swirl around like sharks, asking "so, you
still happy out at <some company name>" and hope that
in your drunken state you'd actually speak to them
long enough to let them try to talk you into jumping
ship, but not so long that your "geekness" would rub
off on them and keep them from being able to get dates
-- while soon-to-be-failed startups tried to rid
themselves of mountains of logo'd pens, mugs, shirts
and weird doodads with no obvious function before
their VCs saw what they'd been spending all the seed
money on and pulled the plug. If you were lucky, you'd
actually be able to squeeze between the bodies stacked
thick as carp at Pymatuning Lake between your beer and
the bathroom often enough to get a halfway decent
buzz, and not soil yourself.

Then the dot-bomb bust happened, the Foundry closed
(too bad; good beer), all the startups shut down, and
Pittsburgh geeks had to spend most of their time
filing and re-filing for unemployment while looking
for tech jobs in other markets.

Rumor has it that it's started up again at the Church
Brew Works. Which either means that:

a) Pittsburgh geeks will be able to replace all of
their hole-in-the-elbows tech logo shirts with new,
spiffy shirts from some new, spiffy soon-to-be-failed
startups;

b) there is enough of a tech market in Pittsburgh to
make it worthwhile for recruiters to pay for beer
again, or;

c) the Church Brew Works is going to go out of
business (too bad; good beer).

Dave

PS -- I'm in therapy for cyncism right now, and taking
the new anti-depressant JobsReportWhatJobsReport?(tm),
so if you're a Geek Night organizer taking offense to
this posting, please remember that it's not nice to
flame the mentally ill.