Twice, over the last week, I've been discussed the London geek community. Specifically, how small it is. Despite having hundreds (or more probably, thousands) members there seems to a very close knit connection between any two members. Think Erdos numbers, or the Kevin Bacon game.

So why is it? Well, probably that anyone of any importance will belong to one of "standard" geek institutions of London, which I propose are: Imperial college, London Perl Mongers, Lonix/Gllug and 2600 (don't laugh!). Many others (such as the PHP meetups, Ruby/Rails communities, etc) have a fairly large enough cross-over membership to be only "two people away" from anyone else.

Last Friday, Billy Abott and myself were discussing this and came up with the Wistow Number. This is like the Erdos number, but for London-based geeks. A Wistow Number of 1 means you personally know Simon Wistow. 2 means, you're a friend of a friend. And so on.

However, Billy highlighted a problem... everyone knows Simon Wistow.

This gives everyone in London a Wistow number of 1. Rather dull, I'm afraid.

So, to counter I propose the Cowfish Number. This is the number of distinctly different ways in which you know someone. So my Cowfish Number for Simon Wistow would be four, as I know him because:
1. he works with my old line manager
2. he's a friend of Dom Giles, who I hired as a games programmer many years ago
3. he's a friend of Billy, who I know independently.
4. I know him anyway (through PM and various tech-based conferences)!

If the same name comes up in two different threads, it's not a different thread!