Blog: Catalyst Club

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Last night I headed SOUTH for the seaside and BRIGHTON where I was due to spend the evening at Catalyst Club. Before that however I had an ASSIGNATION with a PAL in the very nice indeed Evening Star, which is a LOVELY pub. We discussed some THINGS which will hopefully enter the public domain in a few months, but mostly just had a DELIGHTFUL bit of pub time. It was ACE!

I then TORE myself away from that to head back up the road to Grand Central, above which the night was occurring. It took me a while to work out where the DOOR to the upstairs was, but once I'd got that sorted out I headed up for an evening of EXPLANATIONS. Catalyst Club is a similar sort of idea to stuff like Nerd Nite and so on that I've been to lately, except this one was a lot less science-y based and more General Interesting Stuff.

The VIBE was very much in the Totally Acoustic vein, with a crowd of what appeared to be REGULARS and Dr David Bramwell doing some excellent hosting. It kicked off with Jane Bom-Banes doing a poem called "Aqua Annie" which was a) accompanied by a series of paintings b) funny and c) EXCELLENT. Then Rebecca Stott gave a talk about BARNACLES that was EXTREMELY interesting and, after the break, Chris Roberts talked about the history of some South London parks and included an EXCELLENT joke that I GOT about 0.5 seconds before we were supposed to and inadvertently ROFLED.

It was all brilliant but the most exciting bit was at the end, when Chris Hogg gave an excellent talk about the positive possibilities of AI which had the effect of making people FURIOUS. I really felt for him, as he'd tried to show the good side of how it could be used to create new possibilities, but I think some of the language used ("mundane activities" for instance) inadvertently would people RIGHT up. He dealt with it very well indeed, and I was sad to have to fly off for my train and miss seeing whether it all ended up as a PUNCH-UP or LOVE-IN!

It was, as I say, a GRATE night - I'm really enjoying going to these sort of things, where enthusiastic and interested people explain things they're enthusiastic and interested in to other people of a similar persuasion. To be honest I've been GOING to some of these as GIG-SCOPING to see if I can do some Doctor Doom explaining at them, but I've been really really enjoying just GOING!

posted 14/2/2025 by MJ Hibbett

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