This is a change from past events, which have always been held at a bar or restaurant, but I think it's a net win. Why? Well, we don't have to compete with a bar full of people for places to sit / stand, and we don't have the noise and buzz of a full bar to deal with. BUT... conveniently, SplatSpace is within walking distance of both a bar and a coffee shop! So if people get tired of mingling at SplatSpace and want food/coffee/beer etc., we can migrate - individually or en masse - to one of the other establishments.
The other positive is that we have access to a project at SplatSpace, so if you want to bring a laptop to demo a project, or practice pitching your project or something along those lines, we can do that sort of thing.
It'll still be pretty unstructured and free-form, but this does give us some more options.