Dave Cross just posted a link to the Programme for Opentech 2008 in July in London. While I've long missed all the awesome bands I've been missing in London, this is one of those events I really would love to go to.
There's really cool stuff like the stuff the mySociety guys going on over there. Hackers hacking government to make democracy work better.
I really enjoyed some of the random conferences I went to in London.
London Perl Workshop had really inspirational talks on people doing seriously awesome stuff in Perl.
Sadly defunct NTK put on a really impressive day called XCOM2002 showcasing people doing weird and cool shit with computers.
I'd love to start something like this here in Sydney. London, at the time, had NTK, which gave enormous amounts of publicity to really interesting geek stuff going on, which helped in getting the word out. Not sure there's the critical mass here, but there are certainly loads of people doing really interesting things.
Not sure how to get stuff going. I've certainly never made it to a Dorkbot here, so I'm as bad as everyone else.
Perhaps we need an NTK for Sydney? Who's up for starting one? I'd only be interested if there's some helpers. For geeks who didn't live in London between 1997 and 2006 (i.e., most of you) NTK (Need To Know) was a sarcastic weekly, purposely low-tech newsletter about what was happening in and around London. By and for geeks, particularly the charismatic Dave Green and Danny O'Brien. Wikipedia article.