Join us on the first Wednesday of every month!
Next event is 6 May at A Rolling Stone.
6 May Speakers
“Espresso yourself. A quick guide to coffee.“
by Waffles Williams
Waffles has been a Barista for over 13 years, in this talk they’ll be presenting an overview on everything they’ve learned about coffee in that time. This will consist of history, biology, chemistry, psychology, theology, and more. Coffee. Everything you want to know.
Waffles has been making coffees for over 13 years and drinking them for even longer. They’re lab is the cafe, they’re lab rats are the customers, the results speak for themself (or more precisely Waffles will be doing the speaking). No doctorate, no PhD, just a lot of experience and more caffeine-fueled research rabbit holes than they’d care to admit. Who were the first caffeine addicts? Can you drink the same coffee as Napoleon? What is the difference between a Flat White, a Latte, and a Cappuccino? How do they extract the caf from a decaf and where does it go? Waffles know and soon you can too.
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“Spilling the Dirt on Soil Biodiversity”
by Dr Frank Ashwood aka Dr Worm
Frank Ashwood will explore the incredible life in soil, and reveal how the creatures living below us have evolved ingenious (and sometimes downright bizarre) solutions for survival in some of the most challenging conditions on the planet. WARNING: this talk will teach you more about earthworm sex than you ever wanted to know.
Dr Frank Ashwood is a soil ecologist at Lincoln University, with a PhD in earthworm ecology. This has earned him the nickname ‘Dr Worm’ more than once, and he is alright with that. Frank is the author of a popular science-style book about soil biodiversity, entitled ‘The World Beneath Our Feet’, publishing this August.
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“MONEYBALL COMEDY – Can data make you funnier?”
by Wouter Moerloose
In a murky past, Wouter was a management consultant. A newly minted stand-up comedian, he now applies the same analytical tricks to increase his ROFL*. In a city where stage time is scarce, he mines data of past gigs to accelerate his transition from LinkedIn to LikeMe!
* ROFL = Return on Fun & Laughs… but forgive him, he just means “what works on stage”…
Wouter is an engineer who spent years in corporate and consulting roles across Europe. A weird dream and a move to New Zealand later he now spends his waking hours trying to master the craft of stand-up comedy by applying spreadsheets and mild overthinking to the deeply irrational art of making people laugh.