Remember that first tweetup?
Here we have @sizemore speaking about why he organised the first London tweetup. I will upload some of the other interviews soon but I’m just checking the player embedding first
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The Social Media Morning
I went to the Social Media Coffee event this morning and met quite a few of the usual people including Deek, Sizemore, Londonfilmgeek and others. I got to know a few more twitter users a little better and that’s where I stayed for part of the morning.
I’ve been networking a lot over the past few days and I think i need some time to think about all the new options. It’s good to get to these events and talk to people. Quite a few people are interested in twitter and because I’m edging so close to the 15,000 tweet mark they’re quite curious to know my thoughts on the topic. People are actually interested both in what twitter is and how twitter works. Over the months I have acquired a respectable amount of knowledge and people are starting to seek it which is great.
That’s just one aspect of the Social Media cafe I saw today but there is one thing that’s going to change.
If no one objects to it I will begin to record the conversations as they go on and edit a summary to make available both via the London Social Media Cafe website for people to consult and keep up to date. I am in discussion with Jeff Pulver of PulverTV to see about covering the London side of Social media so if you know of any events that may be of interest let me know so that I may organise coverage if it’s relevant.
The Seesmic Dinner
Last night I had the good fortune of attending the social media dinner at the Coach and horse in London. It was yet another opportunity to meet people like Lloyd, Sizemore, Phil Campbell, Deek, Rupert Howe, Jess and many other seesmic participants. It was also my opportunity to meet some new people.
I met Vinvin and Johann from Seesmic for example. They’re part of the Seesmic team in San Francisco. Loic Lemeur arrived a little later so it was great to meet him to. It’s not everyday (well actually it’s almost everyday) that you meet CEOs of startups.
It was also Phil Campbell’s birthday so that added a little something to the party. He presented a new method by which to use eesmic which looks interesting although at this moment in time it is more proof of concept and I’ll wait until it’s developed further before discussing it in depth.
I was able to try out the Nokia N95 layout and user interface for seesmic on that night. Loic lent me his phone and I was able to record and post one seesmic post. So far I still think it’s a little slow so i prefer to use the web interface.
I got to meet the charming Kittenfluff (unless it’s an imposter as is alleged in a seesmic video from the early hours of this morning;-)) and had a nice time chatting with her and playing around with two laptops, two seesmic accounts and a little seesmic camera ping–pong. I also got an exclusive interview about some mysterious january flies and why the London light is the paper of choice to use as a fly swatter
There’s a great picture of me taken by Thayer
Take note that There’s seesmicAIR and Seesmic being used in this shot.
Two speeches were made, one by Loic Lemeur and the other by Gapingvoid (Pardon the poor sound quality.)
There’s one of Sizemore’s videos too.
Fooz, Giagia, Jason Jarrett and two or three others were present but I did not get to interact with them as personally for this event.
This is a fun group of people are fun to interact with and I’m happy I went to the event. i hope to have many more to look forward to.
The Francofous Seesmic Skype call
There are two communities on Seesmic, those that are English speakers and those that are French speakers. The French speaking seesmicers can be recognized by two things. The first one is the Racoon avatar, the second is that they refer to each other as the Francofous, the crazy french.
Last night Seesmic went down due to an upgrade gone wrong and as a result many seesmicers didn’t know what to do with their time. One seesmicer decided to create a skype conference call where over ten seesmicers were chatting for quite a few hours. I only found out about it via the discussion between Fred2baro and Sizemore and added Fred2baro. Quite a few of the French seesmicers were there and we discussed many topics and it lasted for at least three hours before it was cut short.
What made this conversation so interesting is how people came in and left at various points and how at one point Eric Rice and Purplecar joined the conversation. A few more people joined in including Loic Lemeur although his presence was short due to children in the background playing on a PSP.
I think that this is what the future of web interactions is about. It’s about a global community of people, at the moment early adopters, who have strong ties with friends and family in various parts of the world and no particular illustrated that such as the one of Kosso and Ifiz. They like to advertise that they met “in 140 characters or less”. That was a nice story and it shows the point of the new age of social interactions. I won’t give all the details here as you can easily ask them in person at a later date.
Yep – ten thousand tweets
Yesterday afternoon I arrived at a milestone point, ten thousand tweets on twitter. That’s After less than a year of using the website. To me it’s replaced the university bar for two reasons. The first of these reasons is I’m now a graduate so there’s not much point in going to that bar anymore. The second reason is the organic way in which you create a network of contacts.
When you first arrive in twitter it’s a scary place. You see thousands of 140 character messages arriving every few minutes and it’s a time consuming to find the people that you find interesting. There’s the notion that you “follow” people. It’s used to describe the way in which you listen to what they have to say.
As you listen to this conversation you see that one person talks with another person and over a period of time as you follow the conversations so you get to see who the participants are. Over a period of days or weeks you’ve got several dozen people you’re following. That means that you’re now able to have many conversations a day. It’s just a question of how much time you’re willing to put.
In this respect it’s like university. There are two ways you can treat student life. You can be an Honours student with very few but good friends or you can be a high achieving student who’s created a network of hundreds of friends. I chose the latter option. I could go into university any day of the week and it would take an hour to walk from one side of the building to the other because of all the friendships I had established there.
It’s the same with twitter. The more time you put into twittr the more you get out of it. The fact that people like Robert Scoble, Chris Brogan and Chris Pirillo take the time to follow and listen to people on twitter tells you a lot about the types of conversations that are occuring.
The first two individuals take a huge amount of time to talk with people on twitter and it’s a really great tool to see what’s going on, in fact so great that I no longer feel the need to read as many RSS feeds or listen to as many podcasts, simply because I’m participating in the conversations before they become even blog news.
There is another aspect to twitter. When you’re on twitter you may be behind your computer, having never met any of these people in person and so it’s really strange to use twitter. It’s thanks to Sizemore organising the London twitter meetup a few months ago that I started to see Twitter in a very different light. It wasn’t just a website. It became a means by which for me to create friendships online before bringing them into the real world. Jeff Pulver, Chris Brogan, Robert Scoble and many others do the same.
On the lighter side there’s the flirty side of Twitter. The social media make flirting fun. Quite a few times I’ve created nice friendships with girls and as a result had 2-3 hour conversations via IM, Video webcam and more. It’s a way of life for a new age in human interaction. A year ago I would meet people in person and when they moved to another country the friendship would go online. Now it’s the reverse and that’s what I enjoy so much. That’s why I don’t feel it’s an addiction. Does it sound like I’m an addict?
London | reviews | social media | tech related | twitter | warzabidul | work
Last time I went to the cinema my name was in the credits
Last time I went to the cinema I was in Paris and my name was in the credits. This time I was at the 20th Century Fox offices on Soho Square in London as a guest, along with Loudmouthman, Suzymiller, Danacea, Rupert Howe, Sizemore and many other social media participants.
We were invited to preview the film Juno, which will be out in British cinemas around the 8th of February 2008. It’s nice to be two months ahead of the crowd. It’s also nice to be in a private cinema. I enjoyed the leather seats along with the press package and the fact that when you lean back the seat tilts back at the same time.
It was also amusing to see all these faces. It’s a funny thing to be part of the social media mainly because you recognise and feel that people are familiar although you’ve never met them in real life. What makes this particularly appealing is the fact that it’s not someone saying “oh I’ve heard something about you”. They’ve actually looked at, and appreciated your work, or at least we hope so.
I enjoyed the film and so did the rest of the crowd. Frequent laughter could be heard from around the room quite frequently. I did enjoy quite a bit of the dialogue and the story is a nice one although the end is typical of American films.
Aside from the film and the crowds we did get to interview the organisers of the event as well as Danacea of Forbidden planet, Rupert Howe, vlogger and Robert… whose last name eludes me. It’s 1am and I’m tired.
The Twittervox video should be up by tomorrow evening at the latest. More concise information on those interviewed will of course, appear accordingly
Which do you take to bed, laptop, mobile phone, both or other
We’re living in a permantly more wired world and our conversations are no longer reserved to the workplace, bar or ski slope. As a result electronic devices are making their way into the bedroom more and more frequently. How many of you are on twitter. Is twitter the first person you say good morning to. Are you a Seesmic morning person or a seesmic goodnight person.
Here are the answers I got within a few minutes.
melissah @warzabidul Laptop for me. 08:14 AM December 01, 2007 from twitterrific in reply to warzabidul 
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ruperthowe @warzabidul if i take a laptop to bed, i get threatened with a red card. phone just feels a bit creepy. so i just stay up through the night.
Documentally @warzabidul i am more a book/notebook and ipod touch in bed man.
sizemore @warzabidul: Every night I take to bed with me a girl, a laptop, an archos, a book and occasionally a cat. I don’t get much sleep.Â
MaggieConv @warzabidul I take both! 03:56 PM November 30, 2007 from txt in reply to warzabidul Â
dungeekin @warzabidul: laptop/WiFi devices don’t go upstairs with me. Phone does, but only as an alarm clock. 09:19 PM November 30, 2007 from web in reply to warzabidul Â
So if you thought you were the only one taking your laptop, ipod touch or mobile phone you’re not the only one. There are many of us doing the same.
Twitter IRL
Last night I went to the London twitter meetup and enjoyed the event. I’m used to going out and hearing people talk about music and other things but here is a community that was talking about technology and internet-based activities. Sizemore and Trusted Places organised the event which took place at the Ishtar restaurant.
As a result of my taking my camera with me I was put in charge of covering the event whilst Jess interviewed people about how and why they use twitter. We got some interesting responses from those who use it heavily, less frequently, or have just heard about it. All of this footage is now digitised and should be worked on tomorrow afternoon. Once the footage is edited it may appear on Geek entertainment TV as a four or five-minute piece.
What I liked about this event is that its people are interested in and active in new media activities. As I spoke to Loud Mouth Man he told me of his show called the Old Grey video test. It’s an interesting program where a group of people with webcams in a number of locations talk to each other via video chat. What makes this particularly interesting is the fact that they’re switching from one camera and one person to another camera and another person. It means that you can watch the speakers as they address the issues they have decided to cover for that specific episode. As of yet I’ve only watched one episode but I will definitely watch the second one very soon.
I also spoke to Walid of Trustedplaces and he told me about how they were moving to video reviews as mentioned in their blog. Here is one example of the work they’re doing.
Pictures of the event can be found here and here.
Overall the night was well received by the people who participated and I’m already looking forward to the next one in the near future I hope. I’ll work on getting the video ready as soon as possible so that you may hear for yourselves what people had to say.