I love September. In university land, things start happening again and there are loads of events and things to attend. Too much time on your own and the PhD will attempt to drive you batty.

Stuff I’m going to in the next few weeks:

Tuttle x TED unconference 17th of September, 2009 Ironically this will be my first ever Tuttle related event – despite following them for near enough 18 months now. Really looking forward to this – I much prefer un-events, I don’t get angry about catering costs – nor do I have to pay full fare on the train, as it starts at 1pm (see Oxford below) Not sure what to expect, but keeping an open mind and seeing where the discussions lead me.

Oxford Internet Institute Social Media Convention 18th of September, 2009: The Oxford Internet Insistute are holding their own Social Media event on the 18th of September. Looking forward to sessions on data sharing and dissemination and political impacts of blogging. Annoyingly, it starts at 9am (which involves the train equvilent of  the infinete loop of Leicester, Coventry, Nuneaton and Oxford) so if I even make it, it should be an interesting one.

Beyond Boundaries, East Midlands Postgraduate Group (Loughborough University) 22nd of September, 2009: Now, I stumbled about this one by accident (I’d say it was pretty poorly amplified, hidden away in the plone pages of the University of Leicester’s graduate school) whilst I was looking for ideas for a kinda cross-uni, cross-department, cross-discipline reading group. It turns out it is only 15 minutes from my house on the bike, so popping along to take part in a few workshops on Mobility/Applied Arts and/or Transliteracy/Crossing Textual Boundaries – looking for something to rejig me out of the drone-filled gap of ZOMGINTERNET I’ve fell into over the summer months.

This is combined with my first Cafe Creatif on the 24th of September (at the LCB Depot, Leicester) the launch of Derby’s Social Media Cafe on the 1st of October – and Nick Davies (author of Flat Earth News) is speaking at Leicester Skeptics in the Pub on the 18th of October. I’m also going to try and attend Birmingham’s Social Media Cafe at the end of the month – as well as following what is going on with the MA Social Media people at Birmingham City Uni.

The very best part of this is that all of these events are pretty much free – which is good, because I am skint. (And I’m planning on blogging about each one!)