Geek Dinner London #gdldn – Part two – After

I attended my first geek dinner last night at Gig’s grill house.

Overall review – it was a great time!

I’m sure Gig’s loved me, I spent a whopping $3 on Pepsi.

I met some interesting new people and finally got to put real people to twitter names.

I want to thank the people who made me feel a little less like an outsider looking in, or a fish out of water.

So here it goes:

Thanks @mwickett – aka Mike Wickett for saying hi when I got there, it was appreciated.

Also thanks to @phronk – aka Mike Battista for introducing me to people and inviting me into conversations last night, it meant a lot.

And thanks to @timfelsky – aka Tim Felsky for making me feel like I wasn’t totally out-of-place and that I did have some roots in the group (thanks to twitter).

 

I learned a couple of things last night.

One, my twitter name and its origin continues to confuse people. I’ve probably had about a dozen people ask me where my twitter name comes from since I created it.

For those of you who don’t know, my twitter name is Sadie_Liz. My real name is Sarah Elizabeth. My real name is actually fairly popular (first and last, and even middle). So all variations (that I liked) of  my name were taken on twitter (and everywhere else, have you seen my mammoth Gmail address?).

So I came up with Sadie_Liz. Sadie is a variation of Sarah, both mean princess (some might say I was appropriately named, as I am a royal pain, just kidding). Sadie was also my great-grandmothers name, and later my Grandpa’s dogs name (my Grandma named her, we all wondered if that meant something).

Anyways Sadie is a variation of Sarah and Liz is obviously a short form for Elizabeth, so Sarah Elizabeth, became Sadie_Liz.

 

The other thing I learned last night was that 13 years later, I still really suck at Laser Quest. A group of us from geek dinner took a mid-dinner hiatus for a round of laser tag. It was us and a family, with a couple small kids. They were probably between 8 and 10, so when I saw small, I’m talking more in size.

It is really not fair to be playing with kids who are like 3 feet tall. I’m looking eye level for targets, as they are shooting at me, from the height of my knees. I was dead from the get go.

Also Tim is apparently a king when it comes to laser tag and every time I turned around, I had found him again and I was shot.

I also kept finding @RachFee aka Rachel Fee, at one point we agreed to work together, but she still kept shooting me every time that she saw me.

Then to add to it, I found myself in a corner, being shot by Mike, though I got in a couple good shots of my own, I think.

It was a lot of fun, we all came out so sweaty, it was entertaining

 

After laser tag was over, we headed back to Geek Dinner and I got to meet and talk with more great people, thanks again to Mike (@phronk) for making the introductions and making room for me in the conversation, it was appreciated.

From here I learned that once again I am known to the twitter world as the Blue Jays girl, apparently I need to diversify my tweets.

I finally got to put real people to the online personalities of @ronnyxu aka Ronnie Zoo (now) and @Edjackman aka Ed Jackman.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to talk to Ed as much as intended, but there is always next time!

 

I got to meet a lot of other people last night too, that I look forward to getting to know more in real life and via twitter happenings.

So it was nice to meet @brianfrank, @lukejohnsondev, @brendanpierce, @mattasross, @evilflu and @laurashelby. I am certain I missed people, but it was really great to meet everyone.

Thanks for making my first Geek Dinner London experience a success, I think I’ll come back next time, if you’ll have me.