SMC in London - January Meetup
January 23, 2007 by Lloyd Davis
Despite large parts of the UK trying to blow away with the attendant travel chaos that staggers those from less civilized climes, we had more than 25 hardy souls braving the elements from as far away as Bonn (yes, as in Germany) and Cardiff (yes, as in Wales), for free beer, wine and nibbles (Thanks, Fleishmann Hillard!) and some incidental chat about social media.
There is quite a churn in these meetings so far, though some suckers keep coming back for more, so we started with round-the-room introductions. There was a wide variety - media consultants, media creators, bloggers, photographers, marketers, entrepreneurs, geeks, visual-thinkers and many more.
We then broke into smaller self-forming discussion groups for the bulk of the time we had together. Broadly summarised there were people talking about:
- Living life completely online vs offline, the problems associated with life-cacheing mixed in with speculation about the shelf-life of YouTube videos and timeliness of social media generally.
- Visualisation as a global language - ask Dave Gray for a picture of this one
- The variety of perspectives and channels in using social media for marketing (pictured above), the problems of measurement and the difficulty of matching ‘channels’ and ‘audiences’ ( not to mention the difficulty of using those words or finding others to use…)
- Where does trust come from? Knowing the source? From the content itself?
- Global perspectives - diverse and complex developments in other parts of the world and the predominance of the mobile phone rather than the desktop as social media tool.
I plugged membership, pointed people to the London wiki and the mailing list as tools to keep in touch and encouraged people to come up with suggestions for topics and activities. I’d very much like us to *do* stuff at these sessions as much as *talk* about doing stuff. We’re going to go with the Third Thursday of the month as a regular slot, though we may shift venue around Central London - 15th February will include a post-Valentine speed-datingnetworking spot 
This is brilliant Llyoyd! Thanks so much for stepping in and lending your expert facilitation skills. I am fairly disappointed that I was not able to attend - still need to figure out how to get from SF to London and back within an hour or so… Am especially impressed with the turnout given the weather - 2 chaps sent their regrets that they could not make it because their train station was practically blown away!
I am very much looking forward to my next hop across the pond and a chance to meet you and the other cast of characters who continue to seek a rousing round of conversation on social media.
When we be next meeting in London? Thanx for answer
Next meeting is 20th September. See smclondon.ning.com for details nearer the time.
thanx for web I saw SMC Videoblogging and aslo you
Where you shoted the video
Hi to everyone I am working for company in London so I will join you on 20th September. See you
We want also to contribute to Media Club. See you on the meeting.