2011 Officially Kicked-off

As usual I’m a few days late blogging about LBM and as usual I’m struggling to start without gushing too much about how good a night it was, particularly challenging this time around given I was one of the speakers. Oh what the hell, I’m just going to say it, I thought this was a great LBM.

Nice to get the year started with such a bang and probably the busiest LBM to date – we had somewhere in the region of 120 bloggers turning up.

Obviously it was good to have our friends at Dell onboard. Nice to hear from Kerry (@kerryatdell) about the Trade Secrets campaign which you can check out on facebook soon. Of course the very generous bar tab helped us ease back into the year, but possibly the biggest crowd puller was the Dell Vostro laptop competition. We had over 40 entries to the competition and in the end two winners, with Andreas Kambanis from London Cyclist picking up the Vostro laptop and Tom Phillips a snazzy looking new mouse. You can read their entries here.

There were plenty of other great entries and we had a shortlist to choose from, including those where there was a genuinely good trade secret, or those that simply made us laugh…

Andy Roberts I wanted to make a good first impression so I tried painting my Dell laptop white, using a jumbo pot of tipex. It didn’t work and now I realise this was unnecessary. MACs aren’t the only cool computers any more.

IanVisits ..the more useful tip is to take a notepad with an interesting cover as it can be a good way to break the ice and build relations with people about shared interests.

Alex Guest speak clearly, “Beardy dear, yo Delhi pepper” = “Get it here! Your daily paper!”

Paul Wilkinson How NOT to make a good impression

Trust me, I speak from experience…. Sometimes everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. This all happened to me in one pitch to a new client last year:

1. Do not break your leg. Crutches are never a great look for a PR consultant, and you can get hot and sticky very quickly….

Stuart Waterman Whenever I meet a new person, I hand them a crisp ten pound note. It *must* be crisp – once I made the mistake of giving a new contact a crumpled note, and, while he still accepted the cash, I could tell he hated me for it. It was in the flare of his nostrils.

To those on the shortlist, we doff our caps and say well done, maybe next time you’ll be picking up the silverware (or in this case hardware).

I hope you all enjoyed my talk too. It was the first time I’ve done much more than introduce our speakers and welcome you all along to an LBM. You can see my prezi presentation below which has my 10 lessons and tips from the past four years of blogging. Just in case you’re curious and haven’t asked me yet, I blog about marketing and the London Bloggers Meetup events, but in the past I’ve also blogged about great places to eat in London for under a fiver, being a tourist in London and I have been the editor of the blog for lastminute.com.

There were too many people to name check this time around I’m afraid, but you can see a handful of snapshots from Peter Marshall here if you want to get an idea of who was there. Usual apologies to peeps I wasn’t able to speak to on the night, I seem to remember getting interrupted in mid conversation with many of you, most notably with Mex!

See you all again in around a month’s time.

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.

Splendid Social September

I want to start out by apologising once again for the searing heat at the London Bloggers Meetup last night. I can’t believe the Air Conditioning actually packed in, what bad timing. I promise it is not some strange ploy to heat you all up so you drink more beer, it’s not like any of you need any excuses for that to be fair…

Apart from the heat, what a superb time I had at Social September. I know I’m always banging on about how much I enjoy the LBMs, but for some reason last night for me was one of the best so far. Whether it was the incredibly generous eBay support – I don’t think I bought a drink all night and I certainly had plenty to eat – or the fact we had an interesting talk, or the sheer number of new community members. Maybe it was a mixture of all of the above, who knows. One thing’s for sure I had a top night.

Great chatting to:

Godwyns – I look forward to the erotic poetry and reading about my pink shirt
Murray – more erotic poetry, should make an entertaining read… I’ll complete those interview questions soon!
Tom – as ever entertaining chatting and I hope you make it through the next week
Epicurienne – no prize this time, but keep your eyes peeled, I have an interesting opportunity coming your way soon
Hayley – congrats on winning the Netbook, when’s it going on eBay then…
Matt – so were you the last to leave then..?
Ash – I’ll have a think about your ideas, maybe I could be doing more for the community and me..
Ruthy – only one more before the big trip, good job it’s a great one coming up
Timinator – only one more LBM to go ever, it just won’t be the same (we might all get a chance at the bar before the tab runs out…) but check out http://www.meetup.com/sydneybloggers/
Seb – A short hello this time, but hope all’s going well
Chris – I am really looking forward to the sandwich blog..!
Rob – I enjoyed this venue much more last time, perhaps it was the wine, which reminds me, when are we doing another one…
Mehrdad – congrats on winning the wireless dongle, hope my pronunciation of your surname wasn’t too far off!!
Navin – interesting as ever, good luck with the launch next week!
Marko – I’ve checked out your blog already, maybe you could do a talk at one of the next meetups..?

And so many more people I would like to name check… in fact I could go on for a while but its time to watch the England match!

Thanks to everyone at eBay and Shine Communications, great input and generosity. I’ll keep you posted on the incredible deal I picked up on those Adidas trainers.

So until next time…

Andy

PS if you woke up this morning with a hangover and realised you’d taken the wrong bag home, please let me know ASAP. There is someone longing to have their belongings returned.

PPS if you are into social media in business, you might like to keep your eyes peeled for a competition coming here soon!!