Thanks to everyone who came along to the London Bloggers Meetup on Tuesday, what a fantastic evening. I really found Floyd Smith’s talk about using your blog as a basis for writing a book fascinating and there were certainly a few ideas for any aspiring author to pick up on. Funny that one of our LBM regulars had just sealed a book deal based on his blog content, so the timing was just right. You can see Floyd’s slides below if you want to refer back and of course feel free to embed on your blog.
Thanks to Jazz too for the introduction to Refugee Week. What simple act are you going to be doing that week? It’s being held from the 15th – 21st June by the way!
Great also chatting to Chris, Tim, Mauricio, Be, Seb, Godwyns, Fletch and so many more, too many to name check you all I’m afraid.
So what’s coming up in the world of LBM then?
It looks like we have a cracking summer ahead, not just weather wise, but with some great LBMs, competitions and parties to be enjoyed.
We’ve recently been approached by lastminute.com who are really impressed by our monthly meetups and are looking to sponsor the forthcoming LBM Summer Party. The exact date of the party and more details will be coming your way soon, but it looks like lastminute.com will be paying for the BBQ….!!
They also wanted to give us some exclusive info on an unbelievable competition that is due to go live this summer. There is huge potential for one of you to win a “money can’t buy” prize this summer that will make you the envy of not only your friends but the whole country! You will need to be someone who really loves travelling and of course really wants to blog about it! Read into that what you will, but trust me when I say this is a truly fantastic competition.
What else? Would one of you like to win a Netbook?
BT is now running a competition on www.btmyplace.com for members of the London bloggers meet-up to win an Acer Netbook (worth £200), and given your collective love of London, we thought you might fancy a go at winning one… BT MyPlace is a new service, which – if you’ve got a Wi-Fi enabled device – can pinpoint exactly where you are (in Central and West London), and suggest great places nearby to eat, drink and keep you entertained.
What do you have to do?
They’re asking Londoners to reveal “the best kept secrets in Westminster”. Specifically – best boozer, best greasy spoon, best market stall, and even best public toilet. If you’ve got any favourites and want to enter the competition, all you need to do is go to the competitions section of www.btmyplace.com, and then click on My Secret City. If you’re not already a member you’ll need to register, but don’t worry, it only takes a few seconds. The best entries will also be profiled on BT MyPlace .
And what else?
We are soon to be publishing our very own LBM poem, written by long standing LBM member Godwyns. If any of you have met Godwyns you’ll probably know his poem is not necessarily family oriented, but it’s certainly well worth a read. Check it out here soon.
Oh and did I mention the possibility of two other great competitions coming up. I’m not kidding folks, it is set to be a great summer for LBM community members. But beware, now we have hit the milestone of 600 members, the competition is set to get tougher. Maybe Epicurienne won’t be winning all the prizes from now on in then..!
Oh and don’t forget to keep your eyes peeled incase you get tagged in the LBM BlogTag.
Bring on the Summer I say!
Cheers,
Andy
I realised recently that the London Bloggers Meetup community has become really quite large. In fact at the last count there are 574 of us! That’s an awful lot of bloggers and it’s great that we are all coming together either online of offline with one thing in common, blogging.
However, it got me to thinking how few of your blogs I’ve actually read. I don’t know whether this is a time issue, or whether I just keep reading the same blogs all the time, or if it’s because there are just so many of us in the community that I haven’t got around to it yet. In reality it’s probably a mixture of all of the above.
In any case, one thing’s for sure, I want to get to know everyone’s blogs a little better and to become a little better connected both on and off line. So what better way than to do that than with a game of blog tag. Thanks by the way to Farhan for this fantastic idea!
How does it work.
1. I’m going to choose three blogs from the members list, which I’ll read and write a short intro blog post about – see below.
2. I will include a link / trackback to each blog and tag my post with each blog / blogger’s name
3. I will also tag my post with ‘LBM BlogTag’
4. When you spot you have been tagged, you have to write about three other LBM member blogs (click for members list) that have not already been written about and so on…
5. You will also need to include a trackback to this post to help me monitor when everyone’s blog has been tagged
If everyone participates, we should cover all 574 members blogs (well, those who have included a blog in their profile in any case) within a few weeks..
So here goes, the three blogs to be tagged are:
Farham Rehamn
Thanks Farhan for this great idea. When I found your blog I realised two things very quickly:
1. I hadn’t been there before
2. You write about social communities so I shouldn’t be at all surprised you had a great idea like this
I hope this little project will help to rebalance your social currency, giving you a little back, filling up that depleted account and building your reservoir of Twollars. I like some of your predictions for the year ahead, which some might say are already becoming true. Is Facebook still struggling to show value to its advertisers, is Twitter taking over, a yes on both counts I believe. Will FriendFeed and other platforms designed to aggregate and organise your social media kick-off, I strongly hope so. Will 2009 be the year of the “Social Browser” let’s wait and see.
I will definitely be reading Farhan’s blog again, not only because he writes about everything in such well thought out detail, but I am sure there are a lot of ideas I can glean from Farhan’s writing to help me with the various community building projects I am involved in. Thanks Farhan.
Consider yourself tagged!
Epicurienne
Epicurienne probably needs very little introduction to regular LBM’ers. She often pops down to our monthly socials and more importantly she frequently wins a prize. It started with a trip to Amsterdam for the Blog08 event, but then she went on to win a trip in the Stella Artois airship and more recently a T-Shirt from the Fashion Targets Breast Cancer folks. I have to say, the second I pulled Epicurienne’s name out of the hat for the T-Shirt I just couldn’t believe my eyes, how could she win again! The suggestion from her brother that there might be something going on probably expresses the shock in more clarity – just to clarify, there isn’t anything going on.. : – ). Well, there probably couldn’t be a nicer winner, so it seems fair play to me.
Epicirienne’s blog is actually a pretty entertaining read. It’s generally about life, travel , food, fashion and all sorts to be honest. But really, cold spaghetti, that truly is a “Snack of Shame”!
Chris Applegate
Now on to my third blog and I’ve plumped for the interesting world of “marketing wonk” Chris Applegate. Chris has been around LBM for a while and much to my delight brought his client Berocca along last year with a few free samples and a host of free beers. I’ve got to say I’m not sure I’ll be enjoying a Guinness with Berocca again, but a cocktail perhaps worth investigating Mr Diageo – think of the health benefits of a Guinness packed full of life giving vitamins.
In any case, Chris’ blog qwghlm is another interesting read, particularly if you like controversial and highly opinionated political comment – see latest post about a petition for Gordon Brown to resign, which, if you’ve signed makes you a “fucking idiot”, at leats in Chris’ eyes. Chris was behind the even more controversial video of Hitler’s membership of BNP when the BNP lost its membership database last year. If you haven’t see it, it is very funny.
So Chris, consider yourself tagged too. Who will you choose to tag next..?
Happy BlogTagging folks!
Posted in Meetup on 04. May, 2009
Once again we had a another fantastic London Bloggers Meetup last week. A huge thanks to the crew from Fashion Targets Breast Cancer for supporting our event and helping to make it a smashing evening. The FTBC campaign is truly supporting a worthy cause and it was great to see how and why they are using online communications to reach out to their target audiences. I found the talk really interesting but I was also really pleased to see so many of you walk away with a prize.
Of course, the big prize of £100 worth of Marks & Spencer vouchers was won by Derry who I think was going to buy some lingerie or maybe hit the food hall… For those who need a refresher, here’s the question again and Derry’s winning entry..:
Why should charities use online communications to support their cause?
I think a well-known quote by the cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead can be applied to both charities and to online groups such as bloggers. It reads:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
It is a given that charities engage with any community that can further their cause. There can be no other way. Online communications represent a means to acheiving that goal in communities on the internet, such that they are.
Very Nice Derry. It is fair to say your entry was picked by all of the competition judges. Mind you there were some other great entries from Amethyst, Peter and Chris Rothwell to name but a few.
It was great to speak to a few regulars on the evening and to meet a whole lot of new faces. Peter has taken the usual array of photos of the evening which you can see online. Feel free to drop these onto your blog with an accreditation to Peter Marshall of My London Diary.
Thanks again to all who attended and keep making the LBM’s great Meetups. News coming soon of the next LBM and the annual summer social but, for now, keep blogging.
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