Inspired by Colin's message, I thought of this. Talks seem not to work well for us and I think that the RBL isn't really an ideal talk venue, so how about posters? Bring along an A0's worth of paper explaining the topic and be there to talk about it with interested people. If it's a practical topic, bring along a system and demonstrate it too. This also won't interfere with the normal "box-fixing" that goes on. In the past, I remember informal demos being some of the most useful bits, but they're haphazard and unstructured. I'm not suggesting anything really demanding, but a bit of background material put up and some advance warning about what will be there.

A bit of background on posters (but a bit more formal) can be found at http://www.lcsc.edu/ss150/poster.htm

Hopefully these can satisfy all sorts of people, from beginners to veterans, in the same room at the same time (which I think is the constraint that killed enthusiasm at the first few meetings for my talks suggestions earlier in the year, as it alienates a significant number of the people for a significant chunk of time). For example, I'd love to learn more about building Morphix, but I'm not having much luck yet (bug report open) and I know someone here knows about it... ;-) Could we have a demo and some background material at the next Norwich ALUG?

Also, I'm happy to present something at Norwich, but I'd rather take requests. What do you want?