Posted in Meetup on 21. Jul, 2010
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).
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.
mflow has given us two pairs of tickets to their “Calm before the storm” party, featuring acoustic sets from two hotly-tipped musicians, Lauren Pritchard and Pete Lawrie at Ronnie Scott’s on 15 April (from 5.30pm).
To win a pair of these tickets, download mflow from www.mflow.com, using the invite code LBM2277 and answer the following question:
What is the name of Lauren Pritchard’s debut EP on mflow?
The first two people to email the correct answer to chris.reed@brewdigital.com will win tickets and + ones.
What’s mflow?
You might already be aware of mflow, it’s a new legal music discovery and sharing app which is a cross between Twitter and iTunes, currently in private Beta.
The way it works is that you are recommended music by people that you follow and in turn you can recommend music to your followers. And then, if you buy the music which is recommended to you, the person who recommends it gets 20% of what you paid credited to their account to say “thank you”. (The NextWeb described it as “the social iTunes which pays its users”)
Well the nice people at mflow have given members of the London Bloggers Meetup early access to mflow to try it out before it goes public later this month.
So, if you’d like to rub shoulders with the likes of Zane Lowe, PopJustice, and NME on this social network with music at its heart then go to www.mflow.com, download the app and use the code LBM2277
Things like integration with Twitter and Facebook and blog-ready widgets are all in the pipeline before the public launch, but even without them it’s frighteningly addictive…
If you’d like to know a bit more about mflow before-hand, or to write it up, then do check out their blog, SMNR, or follow @mflow.
And if you’d like to know what others are saying about it first of all, try the Guardian (who describe mflow’s as “Twitter’s hipper little brother”), Stuff, or LBM’s very own Laurence Borel’s blog.
I don’t know if any of you have been following lastminute.com recently, but they’ve been taking giant strides to work with and talk to bloggers about what they’re up to. One of their initiatives has been the monthly ‘oh you lucky bloggers’ top 50 chart, which I should point out I’ve been involved with. That said, I do not create the rankings!
I just wanted to highlight that 13 of the top 50 blogs are part of the London Bloggers Meetup Community, that’s just over a quarter. It just goes to show what I’ve always said, that LBM is full of phenomenally interesting and talented people. Nice to get some recognition!
For more on lastminute.com and oh you lucky bloggers, check out the blog. To see who’s on the list from LBM, see below…
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.
Recent Comments