Thursday Gathering 31

The weekly Venture Cafe Edinburgh Thursday Gathering at the Edinburgh Futures Institute on Lauriston Place — the thirty-first edition.

Free, no ticket and no application. Doors from 17:00, with parallel sessions and an open networking floor running to around 20:00, and you can leave whenever it stops being useful. Each week's specific programme goes up on the Venture Cafe community site a few days beforehand; the shape of the evening does not change. The Venture Cafe network runs the same Thursday pattern in cities across Europe, and in Edinburgh it has become the one weekly fixture founders, students, investors and support organisations all pass through.

Why go: it is the most reliable room in the city — on every Thursday, so it is the easiest place to be found and the easiest thing to bring someone along to. Best for founders who want conversations rather than talks, and for anyone new to Edinburgh tech.