OK, so it’s back to first post and suck time. Almost one year into this blog and you get your first opportunity to see me in moving pictures. Having been interviewed by the beeb already this week, I guess I’ve just got the bug, I’ve got to be in front of a camera daahlink.

In this opening episode, Lloyd gets to find out that he looks like sh*t, that his eyebrows look like hairy caterpillars and he has Austin Powers teeth. He also finds the one face that he should never, ever, pull in public, unless he wants to be shot.

Maybe this will be a one off, maybe it will continue – you’ll have to keep tuning in to see.

Also, I don’t know if all of this will work at all in a blogpost, so be patient with me, luvs. [update: ok, it works for me in IE, but Firefox insists on treating it as a text file. Tell me gently what I’m doing wrong, please. Ta.]

tags: videoblog & epsom

The first London Girl Geek Dinner happened and was partially recorded last Tuesday (16th), but in the slow backwaters of mid-August, it takes a week for these things to percolate through on Perfect Path.

The last couple of bashes at the Texas Embassy (special guests Robert Scoble in June and Seth Godin in July) have been throbbing testosterone fuelled affairs, with a smattering of women, but overwhelmingly male.

So Sarah Blow made use of Hugh’s excellent wiki to organise one just for the grrrls. Fortunately for me, guys were allowed as long as they went on the arm of a girl who was already going – and of the several thousand that asked me, Helen Keegan was the first.

Naturally, there was just as much noisy conversation from 50 women as there had been from a mixed crowd of 200 – it was different, but in a weird way that didn’t make sense to my male psyche but the big diff was that I talked so much I didn’t take any pictures and I haven’t seen any either. Certainly something in the room distracted me so much that I didn’t notice until too late that I only had about 25 minutes of space on my minidisc and my brain turned to goo trying to work out why it had stopped working in mid podcast. Sorry Table 69.

I met some new people and some of the usual suspects but overall it was great – I would strongly encourage gorgeous techie women to go to the next one, but guys, don’t bother, you wouldn’t like it. No really, believe me, it was hell, just forget I mentioned it, you really really really wouldn’t like it.

girl geek dinner & london

So after Seth Godin had sat down, crumpled in a heap after his marathon hour and a half talking and answering questions, I popped around the room to find out what people in the audience thought.

Quite a few people left straight away (well it was after 9pm – gasp!) but I’m sure you’ll agree a significant part of the cream of the crop remained. Here you can hear from (roughly in order of appearance):

Geoff Jones, Rachel Clarke (saying hello again and nothing else), Paul Birch, Michael Smith, Robert Loch, Helen Keegan and Sarah Williamson, Alistair Shrimpton (sorry still on 3.17 here) and Simon Christy, Max Niederhofer, Loic Le Meur, Andrew Carton, Alison Whelan, Andy Bell, Matt Drought, Feena Coleman, Deirdre Molloy, Charles (?), Mark Rogers.

tags: seth godin & london & marketing & audience

The first Perfect Path podwalk on the streets of London since the explosions on the transport system yesterday, 7th July. My small contribution to “business as usual”.

I take a bus from Waterloo up to Holborn (apologies for the cut, I didn’t feel comfortable talking on the bus, nor did I feel comfortable about feeding you 6 minutes of bus sounds) and then walk up through Russell Square and peaceful parts of Bloomsbury. Pictures are on flickr in a photoset tagged london and podwalk015.

tags: london & podwalk & podwalk015 & london+business+as+usual

Here’s an audioblog from Sunday afternoon.

I walked along the south-west side of the Serpentine, starting off just past the Lido. You’ll hear Canada geese and possibly moorhens as well as the usual varieties of tourist to be found in Hyde Park on Sunday. It’s a kind of pause for breath after the spurt of activity over the last couple of weeks.

Later, I took some photographs of the Live8 site which was still largely enclosed, but with some gaps in the fencing. They’re on my flickr photostream with the tag postlive8.

tags: audioblog & london & hyde park & postlive8

So here it is podwalk fans, number 14 in a series of not enough. Yesterday I elbowed my way through the tourists along Neal Street, down James Street and into the Covent Garden Piazza. After a clockwise tour of the piazza, I arrived at the East Side for a street entertainment spectacular from Bruce.

If anyone knows Bruce, or knows any way of contacting him, let me know in the comments so that we can set up a virtual hat for listeners to this podcast to donate their two quid by paypal. Apologies for some of the raucous laughter and shouting, I quite forgot I was on mic at times! Pictures as ever on flickr.com with the tag podwalk014

tags: covent garden & podwalk & street entertainment & Bruce

Aaah the relief. I thought I’d never get back on this particular horse, and I was missing it so.

Les Posen broke this news to the podcasters group that the Queen has bought an iPod and started speculation about which podcast Her Majesty would be listening to first.

I thought it would be most appropriate for me to take you on a stroll down from the Perfect Path Penthouse to Buckingham Palace, through Mayfair and Green Park. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before I get a call from the Palace.

Last week, I published my first interview with a UK public servant, which is to be part of the offering of Public Service Conversations. I spoke to Liz Railton, who is Deputy Chief Executive of Essex County Council

I’m very pleased with how it turned out as a first go, but I’m making the audio (31 mins 10.7MB) availabe here as well to spread the word and to get some more feedback (the level of subscription to the Public Service Conversations feed is relatively small) particularly from those who know podcasting well, but are less intimate with British public services.

I have another interview in the can, awaiting approval. Before I do anymore it would be good to know what people think of this one.

What do you think of this as an idea? How do you find it as a podcast? Do you think it’s worth continuing with? What questions would you have liked me to ask Liz in addition to what we talked about?

Hugh MacLeod organised a fantastic geek dinner tonight (err.. last night) and yours truly spent one hour of it wandering around and interrupting the fun (54:02min – 18.5MB)

It really was as much fun as it sounds. Everyone was just amazed at the numbers of people and just how well organised it all was. I don’t normally stay up until 2.30 am to post something, but this was a special occasion. I didn’t really feel I could go to bed when there were such geeky moments to share with the world. I felt I’d be letting my fellow geeks down if I postponed it for another six hours or so. But now I must go to bed or else I’ll start rambling.

The wiki page where we all signed up will now be turned into a record of the event with links to people blogging about it, to photographs and any other podcasts.

Nightie night.

Bonus audio: Kosso has a podcast of Scoble’s speech

It’s Friday, thank God, and I get to talk about playground stuff, social etiquette and global acceptance. Bonus question: who are you? – yes you, at the back, the quiet ones.