I only heard about Opera Software's scheduled visit to Durban on Monday. While I couldn't attend the lectures at DUT or UKZN I made damn sure that I could attend Thursday's "informal gathering" at the Suncoast News Café. You see, I started using Opera when it was still ad-supported (and I honestly don't remember the first version number that I used). Before Firefox even existed I was using a tabbed browser with mouse gestures, cool keyboard short-cuts, colour themes, customizable everything and built-in mail client. But I digress...

Finally, some time to reflect about the first 27 Dinner (http://27dinner.pbwiki.com) in Durban. There were 27 people present and it was on the 27th of oh-seven, 2007. Isn't that cool?! The dinner attracted a surprisingly diverse group of people. Web design, IT, programming, retail, education, open source, marketing and dentistry were all represented. The evening was hosted by Dave Duarte (http://www.daveduarte.co.za) and Marc Forrest (Durbz Blog, http://durbzblog.blogspot.com) with Graham Knox (Stormhoek, http://www.stormhoek.co.za) and Anice Hassim (Immedia, http://www.immedia.co.za/), and Michael Chadbourne (Mike's Desk, http://www.mikesdesk.za.net/) doing the speaking. Eran Eyal (eSquared, http://esquaredfashion.co.za/durban/) gave away a designer t-shirt voucher in return for some thoughts. There were freebies a plenty, with wine sponsored by Stormhoek, and goodies by (Storm, http://www.storm.co.za) and East Coast Radio.