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.
It’s 8 days now until the next meetup and we have a completely full house . I don’t know whether this has anything to do with the support from our generous sponsors Smirnoff, or just because the last few socials really have been pretty great… either way suits me, but I have to say I’m particularly looking forward to the next event. We have a waiting list by the way, so if you can no longer make it along, please let me know or release your place on meetup. There are others waiting in the wings to join us.
Smirnoff are hosting us in the bar of parent company Diageo and have promised to give everyone a cocktail making lesson, along with designing a custom cocktail for everyone’s blog. Something I’m sure every discerning blogger would be delighted with. Because of the venue there will also be a strict guest list on the door and as they say: “if you’re name’s not down, you’re not coming in!”
Personally I’m looking forward to trying one of their famous Moscow Mules…
Mosco Mule on YouTube
I’ve just added a video and audio commenting plugin to the blog which I’m going to trial for a short while. So please everyone, give it a road test so that I can see how well it works.
Along with that I’ve created a FriendFeed for the London Bloggers community where I’ll be publishing your tweets – let me know if you’d like to be included (@Annie Mole – I’ve added you just to test it out, hope you’re ok with that..? )
I’m hoping to setup another competition for this month too, so keep checking back for news on that.
See you all on the 30th.
I’m not going to write very much about the London Bloggers Summer Social, just pass on some of the feedback I received:
Mex
“ Excellent event. Lovely location looking out onto the river. Stella sponsorship was extremely well pitched with nice competition, some goodies and drinks – kudos for not just supplying Stella ”
Lewis
“ Best yet me-thinks! ”
jedb
“ Really good time was had… got there early and had time for good chats with new faces. Well done Stella for the sponsorship. See you lucky people on Friday in the Airship! ”
Navin
“ had an excellent time.. a very helpful and warm organiser.. and warm knowledgeable people.. good stuff to talk about.. ”
Chris
“ Brilliant! ”
Gary Andrews
“ Great idea, really good evening. Everybody was really friendly, was good to meet other bloggers. Great fun. ”
I have to say, I agree with all of the above. It was a great night. Thanks must go out to Jason Mical at Edelman for arranging the Stella Artois sponsorship. For me it was a really great way for Stella to engage with the blogging community, but I’d be really interested in hearing your feedback too.
Did you appreciate Stella’s sponsorship, could they have done anything differently, was the airship competition suitable, did you take a glass and a USB stick.. and would you be interested in more corporate involvement at the meetups?
Please let me know your thoughts with a comment or two..
Peter Marshall has kindly added some photos to the meetup page and there are a few of my terrible snaps below, including a photo of the airship!
The winners of the ride on the Stella Airship are listed below and their entries can all be read on the Stella competition post:
Epicurienne
Robert McIntosh
Lewis
Jed
Debbie
Allison
Enjoy your flight guys (if the wind ever drops enough for the airship to take off that is!).
Thanks everyone for making the socials what they are today! I have to share Pete’s thoughts:
“ Lovely venue, lovely people – I’m convinced that if we really got our heads together we could come up with the next Google 
met people with some amazing new ideas and angles on existing technologies ”
I’m going to skip August and take a summer holiday, but we’ll be back in September with some potentially exciting new supporters.
All the best,
Andy
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