Talking up the London Bloggers Meetup

It’s always interesting to see the blog posts and tweets after an LBM, none more so that Ill and Ancient’s posts. Who else would have thought to evaluate a social evening with a graph depicting his engagement with fellow bloggers over the course of the evening.. an example of why I always say the bloggers meetup is full of phenomenally interesting people.

Anyway, it was once again a pleasure to host the London Bloggers Meetup, particularly as we were being hosted by Talk Talk in their snazzy new Customer Experience Centre and Rob from the Real Cycling blog was giving a presentation on how to add podcasting to your online world.

I have to thank Rob for what was a detailed and well thought out talk, which, if I’d thought about it, I would have recorded with audioboo and made available on the blog. But never mind, if you want to get the gist of his talk, head to the Real Cycling blog which has all the info he presented on the night. It’s the first time we’ve had a presenter heckled / corrected during their presentation (thanks @radiokate) which thankfully didn’t throw Rob too much.

TalkTalk were as generous a host as we could have hoped for, providing a good array of beers and some wonderful canapés. At one point the venue manager tapped me on the shoulder and said:

“we’ve already got through most fo the beers, do you think I should order more, or will everyone be happy with the wine.”

I think she knew the answer before she’d finished the question and organised a few more cases. I was surprised just how good a venue the Talk Talk centre is and if you didn’t get the chance, do pop back and check out the lounge and business incubator spaces on the 1st floor and above. A great little centre and I must applaud Talk Talk for finding a creative use for the space they acquired on buying Tiscali. A huge thanks to Maggie, Leanne and team for hosting us so well. We’ll be back (if for nothing else but to use the free internet).

So who did I speak to on the evening. Well, a lot of people, new faces and old and I’m not going to name check the lot of you. But a few notable peeps as ever:

Lolly – a pleasure as always, let me know on the LBM paternity cover
Matt – good to see you being one of the last to leave as usual. Drop me a line on that potential sponsor
Peter – you’ll have to wear a health warning with the number of times I saw your flash going off, but the usual great pics online already I see
Proactive Paul – the paperless office, interesting read and let’s chat about how you could shape into a talk for a future LBM
Pete – now you’re selling ads, perhaps you can teach the rest of us how to do that on our blogs…?
Mehrdad – there’s no way you are that old, just no way.

Heading back to Ill and Ancient for a second, he asked the question…

“would Andy the LBM organiser consider hosting a special, where all the regular bloggery meetuppery people had to do a 60 second talk. Some deal with twenty slides in a minutes or something. Would that entertain?”

The answer is absolutely. If we have enough people interested in doing a 60 second talk, then I’m well up for that. Volunteers please.

Well, enough from me. A fantastic evening had by all I hope and look forward to the August edition (more details coming soon).

June London Bloggers Meetup – One of the Best

This might perhaps be the most belated blog posts I’ve written in some time, but what the hell, it’s worth the effort. If for nothing else than to thank the guys at Best Buy again for bringing their show to the last London Bloggers Meetup.

For some reason I wasn’t entirely sure how everyone would take to me bringing an electronics retailer to the meetup, but it seemed like everyone was genuinely interested in what Paul (Best Buy UK boss) had to say. Maybe it’s  because they’re taking a very customer focussed approach to retailing, which if you think about Curry’s, PC world etc, it’s fairly clear they don’t. Or maybe because they actually know what they’re talking about.

I was once talking to a salesman in Curry’s when trying to buy a camera. I was comparing two brands and asked him for his opinion on the two cameras, the answer went something like:

it’s just down personal brand preference. Like with cars, some poeple prefer BMW, others Mercedes, they’re both the same really.

Needless to say I didn’t buy the camera. I’m pretty confident I wouldn’t get the same experience at Best Buy.

Over the years I’ve been running LBM, we’ve had some pretty cool prizes given away: big screen TVs, trips over London in an airship, weekends away in Amsterdam. But this was the first time we’ve had something signed by Dr Dre. And it has to be said, Mauricio looked like the cat that got the cream when he drew the winning prize – a set of Monster Beats headphones. Presumably you’ve road tested those headphones by now Mauricio..? Any good?

Now I think about it, perhaps people were pleased with Best Buy too because of the seemingly endless supply of Bon Jovi tickets given away. I think I was one of the few people to have not walked away with a pair of tickets, but then I guess I was drawing the lucky winners.

Of course, the night wouldn’t have been the same without Tom Tired of London Tired of Life and his cracking presentation on politics and blogging. Who else would have shared the fact that John Prescot’s manhood is the size of a chipolata was first broken as a story on a blog. Can I say that now he is a Baron..?

In case you want to catch-up on any of the polticial blogs Tom talked about, here’s a link to them all.

Guido Fawkes – http://www.order-order.com/
Iain Dale – http://www.iaindale.blogspot.com/
Conservative Home - http://conservativehome.blogs.com/
Spectator Coffee House – http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/
Paul Waugh - http://waugh.standard.co.uk/

Tom, thanks again for a hugely entertaining presentation. I always like to have regular LBM’ers as speakers and if anyone else fancies taking the stage, please drop me a line. It’s not as daunting as you might think and it’s pretty much always a friendly crowd – unless you are a brand coming to sell something.

The other news that night was that regular LBM’er and entrepreneur Navin found out his Love@Tube iPhone app was approved by Apple that very night. Congrats Navin.

If you are single and looking for love, check out his app in the App store now.

Well that’s it. Look forward to seeing you all again on July 14th for the next edition of the London Bloggers Meetup.

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.