I’m Actually a Midlander

The last edition of the London Bloggers Meetup was in actual fact a little while ago now, sorry it’s taken so long to blog about it folks. However, that does not mean it was anything other than another fantastic evening. I have to say we had more than the usual number of new faces, perhaps all of the beer bloggers who turned up to hear from Greene King IPA tipped the balance, who knows. What I can tell you was this made for an interesting evening with a nice mix of bloggers, beer aficionados, regular LBM’ers and good old fashioned regular bloggers.

I thought John Bexon, the Head Brewer from Greene King IPA was a fantastic speaker. In fact, had we been at a beer convention and not a bloggers meetup, I could probably have sat and listened to him for another couple of hours. Check out his blog and also a fantastic looking iPhone app too – the iBrew.

John talked about the difference in the tastes between the North and South versions of Greene King IPA and I have to say from memory the Northern version was more to my liking. But being a proud midlander I’d be keen to see a version just for us – although you might say that given so much beer is brewed in the midlands around Burton-on-Trent and so on that all beer is made for us anyway… It was certainly a pleasure to draw some prize winners out of the ice bucket so congrats to those who won rugby tickets, weekends away or just good old beer. Do come back and let us know how you enjoyed your prizes.

Following on from John we had Lorena Sparenberg talking about the fantastic work in Madagascar from charity Azafady. As a quick reminder about Azafady:

Azafady works with local people to conserve threatened forests situated along 70 km of coastline, home to countless endemic and endangered species. Our aim is to help the poorest communities in Madagascar to empower themselves and develop in sustainable ways, increasing local access to health care and education. A core priority is to conserve the delicate ecosystems of Madagascar through facilitating viable alternatives to deforestation. Our projects and volunteer programs are at the frontline of global conservation and development work, with integrative and innovative projects which emphasise training, capacity building and education geared towards helping local people to help themselves.

If you want to help out, drop me a line and I’ll put you in touch with Lorena. I think largely Lorena is looking for help on how to make the most of their blog and other social media to raise the profile of the charity and I’m sure there are more than a few social media experts in the crowd who could add some value!

All that’s left is to thank Greene King IPA Revolution and Consolidated PR again for hosting us. It truly was an thoroughly enjoyable evening and I’m grateful for the samples we took home too. I tucked into the Rutland first, given that’s just down the road from where I call home and so far so good. Of course great to meet so many bloggers again as usual, too many to name check, but I’m pleased you were all able to attend. You can see ome photos of the evening below and also here and here.

Did anyone else spot Lawrence Dallaglio when he popped in for a pint…?

Photos couresty of Consolidated PR

LiveBlogging at LBM

We had a great start to 2010 with the first London Bloggers Meetup of the year being sponsored by our friends at Vodafone.  Despite the snow (which meant I had to head for an early train) we still had a great turnout, I think at last count we had a handful over 70 people at Jewel Bar in Covent Garden. Of course, this may have had something to do with the fact there was the chance to win a Vodafone iPhone, of which the lucky recipient was long time LBM’er Judith from SEO Chicks – who didn’t miss the opportunity to share a couple of SEO tips too.  Well done Judith…

Of course the iPhone wasn’t the only attraction and Vodafone also persuaded Electric pig to come along and talk about liveblogging – in fact they live blogged during the presentations and you can see the transcript by clicking on this link. Thanks to James Holland for agreeing to talk and giving a good intro to Liveblogging. James, if you read this, can you send me your slides as I’d like to post these up here too.

Of course I mustn’t forget to thank everyone who came along. As I said, I had to leave early, but I still had the chance to chat to Rob from Realcycling (I’ll be checking out Audiboo), Al Robertson, Harry Wood, Bernie Mitchell, Marko and a host of others. We had the usual blend of newcomers and regulars which made for an interesting evening.

Thanks also to the Londoneer for the photo (left) and of course the crew at Shine.

Look forward to seeing you all again in February – keep your eyes peeled for the chance to register soon on Meetup.

Christmas Bloggers Meetup

We held the Christmas edition of the London Bloggers Meetup last night and if I had to describe it in one word I’d have to say it was simply great. There seemed to be a lot going on so it’s difficult to know quite where to start, but I have to start somewhere, so here goes. Let’s kick off with the speakers.

Stefan Wesche from Symantec kicked off with a talk about staying safe and secure online. He ditched the PowerPoint and adlibbed his way through, which was refreshing given he represents a big old company. He’d also come across from Munich to be with us, which means Stefan has made one of the longest LBM commutes to date. Good man. He took a difficult question about pricing on the chin and moved on to deliver some useful pointers about security. A couple that stood out include:

1.    use a different password for each site, it’s too common and too easy for hackers to use a script to hack your password these days

2.    make sure you use the latest version of Wordpress / other blogging software as this will have any security holes patched up, making you less vulnerable

3.    be careful about your choice of hosting provider, particularly if you use a shared server solution – which gives me an idea, would anyone be interested in hosting their blogs on a server just for LBM’ers, let me know and I’ll set something up.

4.    choose your plugins carefully, do some research and download them directly from the author

Of course he did mention you might like to buy the latest version of Norton which is their “best product to date”. I queried him on some advice I’d been given previously about Norton using up a lot of your PCs processing power and this is something they’ve improved on in a big way with more recent versions. Roll-on Norton I say.

Well, thanks Stefan and Symantec for the guidance, the beers and also the numerous prizes.

Next up we had the rather marvellous Sian Meades talking about her blogging adventures and life as a domestic slut. A long standing LBM’er, Sian is an impressive personality in the London social media scene and I thought she delivered some useful advice, of which perhaps the most memorable was telling us all not to listen to her advice. Interesting. Well, I thought the tips about looking pretty i.e. using images on your blog, and asking for help from the LBM community were both very valid.

Thanks to Sian and the Domestic Sluts for bringing some really tasty cakes along too. I tried about four of them and I would say the mince pie and the cheesecake brownie were topping the tables, but that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the others. The sluts are welcome back any time.

Last but not least we had Arvind, who introduced his Blog with Heart Challenge. His aim is to alleviate world poverty by helping entrepreneurs across the globe with funds to setup or run their businesses. To do this he is working with microfinance team at Kiva.org. You should definitely check this out. Arvind has created some resources specifically for any blogger who wants to join in:-

1. A resource page for bloggers with lots of ready made posts you can use in any way you like
2. A videos page with a heap of videos about Kiva and their download links.

As I mentioned last night, I have created a team on Kiva for the London Bloggers Meetup community called rather imaginatively ‘LBM’. If any LBM’ers would like to join up and see how much of a difference we can make as a community, you can do so by joining Kiva and the LBM team here.

So there you go. Thanks everyone for making this month a fantastic LBM and I look forward to kicking off again in 2010 on January 13th!

Cheers,
Andy

PS news years resolution number 1 is that I must go on a photography course.  Evidence above suggests I am a complete monkey with the camera…

Tuesday 3rd November was a very good day

Why you might ask?

Well, largely because it was the day of yet another really great London Bloggers Meetup. We were back at one of the LBM favourite spots at Dogget’s Coat and Badge on Blackfriars Bridge. Such a good venue with magnificent views over the river, a plentiful bar and lots of room for a very relaxed Meetup. I would say we had around 50-60 bloggers in the end with a really good mix of newcomers and regulars.

london bloggers meetup

The evening was very generously supported by Paramount too. I have to say, they were very welcome to be there, not only because they bought some beers and ran a great prize draw, but because their team was generally very knowledgeable. I was particularly delighted to hear about Iron Man 2 coming out next summer. I never thought I would like Iron Man, but on a long flight last year I watched and massively enjoyed it, so I can’t wait for the next edition.

Alongside the Paramount shenanigans we had a talk from blog tipster Marko Saric from Howtomakemyblog.com which was both entertaining and nicely pitched. Marko has some great ideas for complete beginners and a few tips even the more established blogger could take away. You can see Marko’s slides below and there’ll be a video out shortly soon too. Keep your eyes peeled on Marko’s blog for the video, or come back here in a week or so. Look forward to seeing the guest blog post we setup with Seojoblogs too!

As usual thanks to Peter for the excellent photos which can be found here or there are a few samples below. Also some name checks:

Tikichris – maybe you could raffle that flat screen you won for charity…
Godwyns – a pleasure as always
Matt – presumably you left last..? BTW can you send me on of those Starbucks cards, seem to have mmisplaced the one I picked up at the LBM
Siany – a brief hello and goodbye, but nice all the same. Looking forward to some cakes!
Shell – same dress for 14 days is impressive, do you think I could do the same thing with a pair of jeans and a shirt…

And so many more. Thanks to everyone for coming, it really was a fantastic evening.

Cheers,
Andy