I’m not posting many articles this week (either on the blog, or on the main site) because I’m doing an awful lot of running around the North of England.

Yesterday was Leeds for the GeekUp over there. I didn’t get a chance to speak to as many of the locals as I wanted, but I think I’ll be heading over there again in future. In fact, I know I’ll definitely make it for November, and hope to make it for December. It was busy last night - numbers were probably higher than the Manchester event last week. Next week it’s the Liverpool GeekUp, which I’m also hoping to make.

Today it’s meetings around Manchester with patches of downtime for coding, and tonight it’s mashup* over in Sale which I’m looking forward to. I’m not sure what to expect of the talks, but it should be interesting to hear what some of the more ‘suit’ types are doing right now. If you make it, hope to see you there. If not, I’ll hopefully be blogging it anyway. If you’re a geek and the £25 entry fee is causing you problems (we were all students living on Pot Noodles once), let me know and I’ll put you in touch with Lee Strafford who is willing to help you out.

Tomorrow, it’s Liverpool and the Open Schools Alliance event I wrote about on O’Reilly GMT at the weekend. That’s a whole new area of interest for me, but I’m starting to realise that open source in schools is going to matter. IT skills in schools in general is going to matter, in fact - the current stance is that computers are black boxes not to be meddled with, and that’s going to have dire impact on our technical culture a decade from now. I feel like we’re letting a generation of potential geeks down right now.

Normally when on the road I’m able to get a reasonable amount of work done - I don’t drive, so trains with handy power sockets are my preferred mode of transport - but this week is proving difficult. Therefore, make the most of the peace and quiet.

Thing I hate most about being constantly on the move: not having a decent home-cooked meal. Vegetarian options on the move are dire and mostly involve cheese. Bah.