Who wants a conversation? 

Le Web 3 beta 2 (or whatever they are calling it) has only a few days left on the early-bird price of 750 EUR. After that, it shoots up to 950 EUR. It was so much fun last year, remember! They've promised no more politicians, but I'm not sure whether they've figured out that having the same old faces waffle about Web 2.0 and User-Generated Content is perhaps not worth the asking price last year, let alone the grossly increased asking price this year.

Don't worry, I'll be hanging out on IRC and watching whatever coverage the crappy wi-fi allows the Content-Generating Users to emit, and LOLing away on IRC.

And, with that, it is now almost November. In January, I took a pledge with myself not to spend more than twenty pounds, dollars or euros (allowing for currency fluctuation) getting into any event (note: that is getting into, not overall). The highest I've spent this year is fifteen pounds, going to a talk at Beers and Innovation. Other than that, it's been Geek Dinners and other events that don't cost more than about a fiver.

If you are getting bored with hearing the same old people bang on about the same old crap, come along to Geek Dinners and BarCamps. They are usually free or cheap, and have nice people. We have two Geek Dinners in London this week, and a BarCamp in a few weeks time. Elsewhere in UK and across Europe, there are lots of great events going on.