Monthly Archives: March 2007

events, public policy, What I'm doing

A long Monday

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BarcelonaWow. Toto, I don’t think we’re in Pimlico any more…

I realised today that my Monday mornings are not that bad normally – I was out early and saw a lot of people looking like they really didn’t want to go to work this morning.

I was particularly happy and excited because I was on my way to Gatwick to take a flight to Barcelona as I’m working with the very nice guys at corante.com to live-blog the World Healthcare Congress through to Wednesday. I’ve never been to Spain before so it’s really cool and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get some sunshine and walk down to the sea at least once before I go back to London.

I’m amazed that I’m sitting here now blogging this when pretty much all I’ve done this afternoon is sit and type. It’s a really interesting conference with a very diverse bunch of participants. Today the afternoon was mainly introduction – we got a welcome from the Minister for Health in Catalonia before a session on improving performance which raised for me two main lines of interest – how to improve quality while reducing cost and how to deal with the chronic illnesses that consume the most money.

I’m writing at http://www.worldhealthcareblog.org/ – do go over and have a look. Perhaps those of my readers with a public policy bent would like to join in the conversation too when I get into the swing of writing, tomorrow. I’m hoping to get some podcasts and videoblogs done too.

I really must slope off to bed now as there’s a breakfast meeting at 0730, which of course is 0630 BST but since my body’s still really on GMT will feel like 0530

announcements, london, photo-sharing, Podcasts, smc, smclondon, social media, social networking, socialmediaclub, video, What I've Been Doing

Charming

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funny adwordsNo I’m not using adwords on this site, but I wanted to share the selection that came up on a ning social network I’ve just set up for SMC London. All there is on the page for reference is my picture and an introductory post from me, and the title with strap “If you get it, share it (in London!)” which still doesn’t quite explain (at least to me) the link to gay bikini wearing chauffeurs with ringworm.

Btw, of course, if you’re interested in joining the network and thereby generating some more relevant advertising, please do get over there and sign up.

events, london, smc, smclondon, socialmediaclub, video, What I've Been Doing

SMC London goes videoblogging

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The London experiment with weekly media-making meetups continued this evening with another member getting his first taste of videoblogging. Guy West has been a regular at our discussion groups and kindly recorded some audio at one of the meetings.

We sat in the brand new foyer of the British Film Institute/National Film Theatre which only opened last week and chatted about our social use of the internet. I was showing off a bit pointing the camera in my general direction which results in the people standing behind me being beautifully in focus, but my face (some will no doubt say this is a blessing) is a bit blurry.

No Palme D’or for this one, but at least we had some footage – and it wasn’t just of me! I showed Guy how to transfer from the camera to PC and then do some simple editing tasks and then we topped and tailed it with some titles and credits. We’d stood around for long enough, occasionally getting odd stares from the patrons of the Lesbian & Gay film festival that’s currently running there so I didn’t make Guy watch while we uploaded it to YouTube – he knew how to do that bit anyway.Next week the clocks will have gone forward, we’ll be into British Summer Time, and hopefully it will be a bit warmer for our first Blogwalk.

Cross posted from the Social Media Club blog

capitalist piglets, events, for hire, london, marketing, open coffee, video, What I've Been Doing

More time at Open Coffee

I was very impressed by Open Coffee last week as you may have noticed, so I went back with more time to spend chatting to VCs, recruiters and entrepreneurs than before.

At the end I was really pleased to get to talk on camera to Sam Sethi of Vecosys and Paul Youlten of Yellowikis about what they’re finding exciting in this whole crazy web scene at the moment.

Good to see John Hornbaker again, not least because it gives me the opportunity to apologise for not linking to him before.

I also talked to:

Rupesh Chatwani of Lonsdale Capital about how the rest of the world is catching up with social media and that humanisation is the next big thing.

Brett Putter of Forsyth Group was he scouting for talent or clients or both? And how about Bright Young Things Clare Johnston and Agnes Greaves? I suspect I’m neither bright enough or young enough to qualify, but we talked a lot about using social media to engage with customers.

Ed Hodges of Voible (formerly blackfin.co.uk) – cool flash conferencing and some other smart applications for mobile, launching sometime in the next 6-8 weeks.

Alastair Mitchell & Andy McLoughlin of the online document management/groupware 2.0 (“like basecamp only more around documents and including workflow” – and British) solution huddle

Briefly at the end Ryan Gallagher and Paul Maitland of ConnectMeAnywhere.com who Sam speaks highly of above and nice to bump into Paul Miller again who is now doing School of Everything as namechecked in the Paul Youlten video.

My most excitable moment was meeting Jamie Wallace of walkit.com – I just love it, love it, love it and it’s so nice when you meet the faces behind great applications, particularly when they’re so self-effacingly surprised to meet a raving fan like me 😀

Blimey! I’m out of Moo Cards.

[update: gaaaah! also had a fantastic chat with Ian Forrester (such. a. nice. man.) from bbc backstage and he indulged my ranting and raving about theatre blogging – forgotten in the first draft because we didn’t swap business cards – Oli Barrett, Paul Birch and Steve Moore also fall into this category – phew!]

advertising, capitalist piglets, discounting, gapingvoid, marketing, stormhoek, threshers, What I've Seen, wino's

If you ever want to go to a meeting I’d be happy to take you.

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stormhoek threshers voucher

They’re at it again. I thought I saw Jason saying nooooo-waaaaay Rosé to this but nevertheless Hugh’s just announced The Stormhoek/Threshers 40% off voucher for getting shitfaced by Easter (well April 1st anyway – uh-oh that date rings alarm bells).

Oh but read the small print: “cannot be exchanged at Main Line stations, Petrol Forecourts, Center Parcs or Student Unions.”

Download the coupon from here and take it to Threshers for 40% off – yes really. Now you know that I don’t drink, but that doesn’t make me a spoilsport – 40% off is, like, a lot.

You don’t need me to remind you what happened last time.

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All Marketers are Liars

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P3120116I went to the absolutely packed to the gills, no room to swing a copy of Campaign or whatever these folk read, Coffee Morning at Breakfast Club Soho on Friday. A cracking hour and a half, not too long; plenty of opportunities for me to ponce about being a social media tart – explaining that this means I wander around Soho trying to make old men very happy – charming everyone with my moo cards and meeting a whole bunch of lovely people. I’m sure, in his self-effacing way, he frowns upon people calling it Russell Davies’s Coffee Morning, but it is very definitely his. Next one’s on 30th March at the same venue.

Note that you can tell it’s for advertising planners as they serve Fruit & Fib.

london, msm, policyunplugged, smclondon, socialmediaclub, What I've Been Doing

Lloyd’s slow Torification part 1

Daily Telegraph News RoomThis is the new Daily Telegraph news room which I had the privilege of seeing at the end of last week. I’d seen the bit on BBC News the other week where some poor Torygraph hack was shown having to make a podcast and video interview in addition to writing a story and complaining that this meant he didn’t have the lunches he’d been used to, but I’d forgotten until I started writing this that ironically for such a bastion of the establishment, the Telegraph was remarkable for being one of the first papers on the web. Nice to meet Shane Richmond & Ian Douglas and interesting to think about the new premises as a possible venue for a Social Media Club.

animals, london, pets, toad, What I've Seen

Down the frog & toad

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P3140133I try to make out that I don’t care about animals. I casually take the mickey out of Gia for her cat blog I have to admit it’s really because I’m a big softy and can’t bear to get too involved with the little darlings.

So I was lost this evening when I came across this little fella in St George’s Square, just outside Pimlico School. He was just hopping across the pavement and I could neither encourage him to hop back into the School nor very effectively keep him out of the road where he wanted to go and would undoubtedly be squished. I told him to go and stand by the wall and keep away from people’s feet, but I’m worried that next time I go out there there’ll be toad guts all over the place.