The vibe and ideas at Friday’s Open Everything Cape Town were super sparky. A nice mix of well known open source projects (South African gov’t open source policy) and novel new ideas (Free Culture House). A good balance of techie and non-techie, with a bias of creative media and open education types. And amazing food, service and atmosphere from Bird’s Cafe. Fun and learning all around.

One of the weaknesses of the Toronto event was the set up. People said they wanted a bit more of ‘what’s open really mean?’ and ‘why is it interesting?’ to set the stage. Philipp and I took at this by introing the Cape Town event with this slide show …

It’s not a bad way to spend 20 mins if you want to get the basic idea of what these events focus on. However, it still doesn’t have the zing it needs. Anriette suggested ‘dig more into the values side of things’. I agree. Also, I just think it needs to be shorter. And, I need to talk slower. Comments very much welcomed.

Of course, the real juice of the event wasn’t Philipp and I — it was all the speedgeekers and the open source in government talk by Aslam Rafee. I’ll be posting on this stuff over the coming days.

PS. Tino Kreutzer has posted some great photos to Flickr, including the one of the Freedom Toaster speedgeek that I included above.