I’m running an Open Office networking night, Castaway, for folk interested in beer, peanuts and digital. Check http://opencast.wordpress.com/castaway/ – offers to host, or RSVPs to attend welcome.

We’ve also been running a monthly meetup for London based hackers at our office. There’s a bit more detail here (http://www.songkick.com/blog/2008/04/24/hacker-meetup-2-photos/) but it’s basically an opportunity for anyone hacking on a project to share ideas and get advice. We created it after experiencing how incredibly helpful it is to be surrounded by other hackers during Y Combinator.

The real benefits of these clusters come in the form of proximity to related services, inhabitants rubbing shoulders with like-minded individuals and also from recognition from outsiders ie a reputation as ‘the place to be’ if you’re in that industry.

The problem with trying to base something like this in Central London is that it’s so hard to build a significant new identity quickly in this city. Perhaps the 2012 olympic infrastructure will yield an appropriate site, and it would benefit from links to Crossrail once it comes.

Otherwise, we’ve got to come up with a better name than Silicon Roundabout.

I think the idea for a TechHub is great – we have something similar on a small scale it’s very beneficial; if anything, it keeps us sane!

Whether it’s a ’roundabout’ or a building or set of buildings I don’t think it matters hugely, although there is something to be said about things that come out of random conversations (coffee machine, corridors, watercooler and the rest of the cliches which are true!) so being in the same physical space does help. Shared services and infrastructure are obvious advantages too, especially for startups.

On another note, there must be something wrong with the CrunchBase map indeed. I don’t see us (PeoplePerHour.com) on the map but when I search on Crunchbase I can find us, together with the full address, postcode etc. Unless I am missing something?