I tried to leave a comment on Marc Canter’s weblog in response to his post reacting to requests for reasonably priced geek dinners, but his weblog is not setup correctly. If you want to use TypeKey you have to edit your Movable Type weblog preferences and add your TypeKey token. You’re not enabling a conversation!
I was motivated enough to post here since Marc unfairly targeted some people trying to make the event work for everyone.
Tantek’s idea was to try somewhere new and to make the event as inclusionary as possible. He’s been to geek dinners all around the Bay Area so I think his suggestion was more out of familiarity than his own convenience. You know all the good eats, but somewhere between $20 and $40 the geek dinner idea lost a following.
Joi’s dinner was $35 plus tax and tip. The menu at LuLu looks within the price range of many people if there were individual bills. $15 pizza should be pretty acceptable.
Yet all these points were lost in your post, bringing us nowhere closer to getting some coolio people together Thursday night to talk about whatever is on geeks’ minds. Last year at the Cheesecake Factory in Palo Alto you brought the family and a few people asked if you were comfortable having so much information about your family online. FOAF and XFN coexisted nicely, people were aggregated, and everyone went home full and happy.
LuLu will be new enough for most people. Most of its plates are in the same range as Cheesecake Factory, so Scoble’s $40-$60 estimate seems a bit high if people just pay for what they order or consume. $16 for rotisserie chicken or a pizza, or $25 for some squab.
No one will be chastised for going lower priced menu or lower cased semantic web. Do what works for you. You can view the ongoing conversations the next morning in RDF, XFN, or in your Technorati, Feedster, or PubSub results. Can you dig it?