After reading Rob’s latest blog post I’m relieved that all I have to do with him is launch a couple of new websites and write a book. When he fails to come back from carrying his bicycle up a volcano or whatever mad bastard thing he’s doing next I will of course be able to take credit for all his ideas.
Not the one about the sheep dog trials though.
The mere mention of one project over there caused the ninjato held to my own throat right now to twitch a little and the last thing you want is a twitchy ninja.
Kwint we can of course talk about. But we’re going to be annoying and not mention it much until we decide to launch. At that point we will of course be babbling like bastards and telling everyone that the bad grammar and creative spelling is just irony.
What we are quite happy to say is that it’ll keep us smiling and that’s always half the battle. Especially with a moaning cunt like me. Of course you’ll all get a kick out of it too.
Because if you don’t we’ll release the twitchy ninja.
Late last night I heard via Twitter that Tony Wilson had died and like a lot of people from my generation felt a great wave of sadness.
Today of course most of the tributes have concentrated on his role in music and in particular the Manchester scene. I grew up in Lancashire and hated just about every band that came out of the area with a passion. While friends were listening to the Happy Mondays I’d be trying hard not to laugh and completely failing to understand how anyone could prefer that crap over Anthrax. 1987 saw the release of ‘Among The Living’ and I was supposed to get excited by muppets from Manchester when guys from New York were singing about Judge Dredd and Stephen King novels? Right.
So if anything Wilson played a great part in winding me up for many years as I tried to avoid coming into contact with the music and fans of just about every band he launched.
But his presence was greater than that. As a local news presenter I’d grown up listening to and watching Tony Wilson. In a world of dull as dishwater programming he always brought a much needed boost of vitality to everything he was involved in. Even when a lot of that stuff was cheap and bordering on the ridiculous. I fondly remember him presenting a terrible game show called Remote Control which I believe involved strapping students to a wheel and then spinning them around for a bit. Much earlier than that he’d presented Flying Start in which nervous would be entrepreneurs vied for a couple of quid to get their fledgling businesses off the ground. He also did a fair bit of World in Action and of course Granada Reports (which also exposed me to that bloke off The Krypton Factor and Richard and Judy before they were Richard and Judy).
So music aside (and I was too young to appreciate his role in So It Goes) Wilson was always a TV fixture. And most importantly to me at the time he was the only person on ‘local’ TV who seemed just as good as the ‘real’ reporters on the ‘real’ news in London.
The last thing I saw him do was a cameo in A Cock and Bull Story. It brought him full circle for me, seeing him interviewing again and this time Steve Coogan, playing Steve Coogan who of course played Wilson in 2002’s 24 Hour Party People (a film I still haven’t seen).
So I can forgive him for unleashing the likes of Bez and Shaun Ryder on the world and I really am sorry to see him go so early. To me he was always one of the good guys.
My head hurts.
So last night was the first ever London Twitter Meetup. I think it’s ok for me to say it was a success because everyone I spoke to last night seemed to have fun and the buzz on Twitter this morning is that it was a good night out.
Early on a few people assumed I have some connection with Twitter. I don’t. I just love to twitter and think it’s one of the best things to happen to the Internet in years. I use it daily not only to keep in touch with friends, but to make new contacts and keep abreast of cool stuff across the globe. I’ve been on LinkedIn for ages and it’s done squat. Facebook I’m warming to, but I’m never going to be a fanboy. Twitter however has given me work and greatly expanded the network of interesting people across London and beyond that I have fun tapping into. Sure there’s software out there that can do more, but for me Twitter is all I need. If you’re not using it you really are missing out.
Last night we had somewhere between 30 or 40 people gather at Ishtar just off Baker Street. I’d mentioned my plans for this kind of event a few times, but when the guys at TrustedPlaces heard about it they immediately offered to provide the venue and sponsor the event. This meant rather than some sweaty Soho pub we were treated to a spacious Turkish restarant, free beer and food. So thanks to both Walid and Soks and of course the staff at Ishtar who ran around all evening making sure we had enough wine and even nipped out to buy a cable when we had trouble throwing Twittervision on the wall (which I believe was the only hitch of the evening).
We had a bunch of people from Yahoo! along with Annie Mole from Going Underground, Ian Forrester from the BBC / Cubic Garden and a nice international feeling thanks to the new French and Austalian friends I made. Sandrine has already posted about the event (while I was nursing a sore head) and Nik has some photos up. My own got increasingly out of focus as the night wore on… damn beer!
Also present and correct were Raphael, Darika, Judith, James, Sumit, Jeremy and of course a bunch of other people who I spoke with at length but forgot to get Moo cards from. If you were there and I didn’t mention you somewhere in this post give me a nudge.
When I told Irina about the event a few weeks ago she suggest I film it for Geek Entertainment TV in San Francisco. I dutifully turned up with my ancient camcorder and Jess gracefully agreed to play Irina for the evening. Then Richard turns up with a HUGE professional video camera and I immediately gave him a field commision as the evening’s official cameraman. He and Jess worked the room ALL night and we have heaps of footage. GETV need exactly four minutes of funny stuff. We have 35 minutes of Twitter love to edit. We’ll try and do that this weekend, but we’ll also be finding somewhere online to host ALL the video we shot as everyone was very articulate and detailed on just why they love Twitter so we we’d hate to see it go to waste.
TrustedPlaces also have some prizes to give out, but we need to go through the Tweets from the night before we decide who gets a card. And Rob and I also gave away some copies of The Raw Shark Texts on behalf of Kwint.
I thought last night that the sign of a good event was that people stuck around long after the food was gone. Then a lot of people refused to leave at all. But this morning I realised that not a single person bothered to ask about the proposed bellydancer… so I’m taking that as confirmation that as London geek events go this wasn’t a bad one.
Thanks to everyone who came (some people really travelled!) and do let me know what worked and what didn’t so that if we throw a follow up event we make it even better. Cheers!
Oh, and as ever you can follow me on Twitter here.
I’ve organised a little get together tomorrow night.
If you’re reading this you’re invited. I don’t want to hear any excuses about the Atlantic being in the way.
Should be fun. Bunch of interesting folk have already signed up and while Twitter is a great excuse for a drink the focus is really on putting a bunch of cool people in a room (with a belly dancer?) and letting the conversation roll.
See you there.
Last week was a lot of face to face malarkey. This week not so much.
Thanks to Corran I now know exactly how rapt I have people when I’m talking utter bollocks:
