London Bloggers Meetup

I was refreshing the social parts that the internet cannot reach last night with my monthly pilgrimage to the London Bloggers Meetup for a chat to bloggers, media operators and others in the field.

Andy Bargery, the meetup organiser was telling me he is developing a new meetup he has christened Shoestring Marketing and we discussed the potential for cooperation with my own group at SmartMarketingWarriors.

Apologies to Heather or Helen, as I spent so much time trying to remember your domain name of H-in-London that whether it was ‘eather or ‘elen after the ‘H’ has now passed me by.   I was also winding myself into something of a rant at the time about the vague way that some people drift through life expecting the rest of the world to support them – so my apologies for boring your socks off if you read this.

James O’Sullivan was also there, budding journalist and student of the modern era.  I read an article in one of the papers at the weekend about ill-thought-through domain names that turn out to mean different things to different readers.  So after saying that you can find James at www.battlethemelondon.blogspot.com I will leave you to work out the intentions behind his domain name. He’s finding it a bit of a hoot whatever you think.

Hi to Chris Gilmour as usual.  Sorry to read about the car but good news about the income boost.

I have to mention that the evening was kindly hosted by Best Buy who are transplanting their electrical goods retailing model from the US to the UK and looking for a small mention from the bloggers attending to improve the buzz.

Best Buy are rolling out offline stores for the moment to bed the systems in but Richard Clark, Head of Online Marketing, was adamant that service level which they claim to distinguish Best Buy from the current competition will be maintained when they go online later this year.   We shall all live in hope as I never did discover how to get the VCR to record the programmes I wanted.

Thanks, anyway, Richard, for the beer!

Oh, I almost forgot the raffle prize I won of a ticket to a live Bon Jovi gig at the O2.  That will be a new experience!

And a bit more about Meetup.com:

• Meetup Everywhere: Turn Your Followers Into A Real Movement. And Celebrate Our Bday! (techcrunch.com)