Enjoying the Breeze

The next London Bloggers Meetup is being held on Tuesday February 24th. If you would like more details or to register, please visit the Meetup page.

If you are here looking for the Bacardi Breezer competition, check back in 24 hours for more details.

Thanks,
Andy

Fifth Estate: Bringing Bloggers and Not for Profits Together

Is there space for a conversation between not-for-profit organisations and bloggers? The CIPR Fifth Estate Group thinks yes and are organising an event on the 19th January February in Central London to start the discussion.

The informal evening will bring together Social Media natives with PRs from charities to meet, network and discuss the potential Social Media has to enhance communications from the not-for-profits in the online world.

It’s free for members of the CIPR Fifth Estate and The Third Sector PR and Comms group, who have also partnered on the event. If bloggers would like to attend they just need to sign up with their names, URLs etc at the wiki.

For more information visit the blog.

Guest post provided by the fabulous Darika Ahrens

Blogger Time Update

I am delighted to announce we have a sponsor for June’s blogger meetup in the form of M3, a mobile social network. They would like to come along and show you what they’ve created to help bloggers (and non-bloggers too to be fair) to get connected and stay in touch with London’s vibrant social scene. I am working on the finer details but it looks as though there will be some free drinks floating around.

You should check them out online to get a real feel for what they’re all about. But essentially they offer a mobile phone led location based service to help you hook up with friends when you’re out and about. Sounds pretty good and I hope I can get some mileage out of it for the meetup. Oh did I mention it was also free (as you’d expect in this day and age really).

Other news is we may well have a presenter coming along too. Someone has volunteered to talk about a new plugin to help drive reader engagement on your blog. More news on that coming soon.

Please don’t forget to RSVP on the meetup page!

Delighted Bloggers

We had another very successful bloggers social last night, back at our old haunt the Camel & Artichoke in Waterloo. Around 40 or so people turned up, all of whom were given a goodie back from event supporters Berocca. I have to admit, I didn’t really understand the link between blogging and Berocca (a vitamin supplement) when they first approached me, but when I heard about an article in the New York Times it all started to make sense.

Apparently us bloggers are working until we drop, putting in long hours and fitting blogging in around full time jobs, or other freelance projects. I can certainly relate to this and probably a lot of you can too.

What’s the link with Berocca then..? Well, the little orange nuggets of Berocca are jam packed full of vitamins to help rejuvenate your tired body and give you a bit of a kick start. Especially useful after a long night writing blog posts before an early morning meeting – trust me, I’ve been trying these little beauties out all week and so far so good. I do however have to point out for those first timers that you will probably notice a bright green colour when you go to the bathroom. Don’t be alarmed, it’s normal (according to Berocca).

For those interested in cocktails, we tried one in a pint of Guinness at the meetup and it wasn’t at all bad. I’m sure Chris and Tom will agree – although perhaps just half a Berocca next time.

What’s next for the bloggers social then?

I got a few comments from bloggers liking the move away from the Coach & Horses (a venue that’s a bit over done now apparently) so we probably won’t be heading back any time soon. I also had some requests for more content at the meetup, much like the legal presentation we had before. Any suggestions are welcome, but I have in mind a talk at some stage about managing content production and I know M@tt from Londonist has agreed to talk about something along these lines before. M@tt?

I’m also in the early stages of talking to a mobile social network about sponsoring the next meetup. This I hope will bring the return of a free drink for us all – I know how everyone likes a tipple every now and then. I will put more information out on this soon. I’m also looking for a good new venue again, preferably with a private room, big screen TV and ideally wheel chair friendly. I’ll let you all know how I get on, but again, any suggestions welcome.

Thanks to everyone who came along on Tuesday, we really are building a vibrant community of bloggers. The comments always reflect what an interesting bunch of people you all are and I hope you will keep coming. New faces are always welcome as are the regulars. Special thanks to Peter, Mex, Andy and the handful of others that have attended every month!

I’ll see you all on the 24th June. In the mean time ‘keep on blogging’, but keep healthy and of course let me know if the Berocca has added that extra little bit of spice..

Cheers,
Andy