Pizza Dinner with Geeks in NYC

I went to a “geek dinner” in NYC on Monday night, a get together organized by Steve Rubel and Robert Scoble, which coincided with Dave Winer‘s birthday. I posted pictures here, and some on Fickr too, other Fickr pics are here and a movie is here.
It was an enjoyable night, and there were many very smart and interesting bloggers and tech folk there; I was able to meet many of them but missed most of them. Maultasch was there and he said he hated it, and I can very much see why. There’s a huge difference between the way that, say a group of sales and marketing extroverts might get together for fun and networking, and the way that self-confessed geeks get together…
Us geeks can be shy (Michael from Hacking Netflix and a few other folks notwithstanding). Maybe we could use a little structure with an informal gathering of 50 people. Opening welcoming remarks by the organizer, a simple ice breaker of some sort, a box of stickers from Staples for us to write our names on and slap on our shirts…
Maybe some folks might think that would go against the “grassroots nature” of this type of informal gathering, but my feeling is that it would make introductions easier and help take a little of the focus off the A-lister and put a little more on the guy next to you, enabling us to make more connections with each other. Making more connections with each other being one of the things that makes blogging such a worthwhile activity…