May 21, 2005
british blogging
Left London yesterday. Got home late last night.
The London Geek Dinner that Robert Scoble and I have organised on June 7th has topped 125 people. Wow.
It was going to be a sit-down affair. But the numbers have gotten so large it looks like it’ll have to be a buffet of some sort.
At the rate people are currently signing up, it looks like we may very well have 200 people turning up. Incidentally, 200 is also the number of people who attended Les Blogs in Paris last month, to give you an idea. And Paris seemed like a lot of people at the time. It’s like this big blogging confab just self-created itself in a London restaurant.
Lots going on with me these days. I met up with Alistair Shrimpton (Six Apart UK) for coffee yesterday. We were talking about how much the UK (and Europe) was lagging behind America in blogging terms. For example, how many British CEO’s are blogging? How many “A-Listers” are British? How many British ad agencies are using blogs to alter the marketing landscape? How many Brits are blogging to radically improve their business’s fortunes?
The Brits have a lot of catching up to do. But therein lies the opportunity for Alistaire, myself, and anybody else crazy enough to catch the blogging disease.
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I think one of the most interesting things about blogging is how much spontaneous self-organization there is.
Take a couple of people with good and popular blogs, book a restaurant in a major city, throw together a WiKi for people to invite themselves — and wham, instant conference.
I don’t know if this is a first, but it could easily become a trend.
Consider this: lots of people make money organizing just such a thing. And lots of people pay to register and go; others are paid to go and speak; etc etc. And here you can get the same result (or maybe better) without those layers of expensive (dis)organization.
Now imagine this spreading beyond blogger meetups into industries that traditionally spend a lot of money on their face-to-face gatherings.
You’ll find out in June how serious this is, but from here it looks like you’ve hit upon something big. If I were in the UK I’d go for sure.
You make an interesting point Hugh.
I’ve just checked my bloglines feed and of the nineteen blogs I subscribe to, only one is British — Johnnie Moore (who like yourself, I’m looking forward to meeting next month at Reboot in Copenhagen).
Coincidentally, I was working with an Ad agency in Edinburgh last week where we talked about the growing desire for customer experiences — especially when selecting between abundant me-too choices.
We all pretty much agreed that more and more people are looking for authenticity and meaning these days, and that blogs were a great vehicle for engaging authentic discussions.
Then the silence … as the great unspoken filled the room.
The current advertising model is of course based largely on inauthenticity.
Bugger. Totally fresh thinking required.
Having recently returned to the UK after living and working in little ol’ creative New Zealand for 10 years, I’ve noticed that not as many folk seem to get excited about the possibilities of fresh or disruptive business thinking here.
Of course it could be that I’m just hanging out with the wrong people, which is why I guess I’m looking forward so much to Reboot.
On a personal note Hugh, I am always inspired by the risks to your ego you take with your writing, and I hope you continue firing my synapses well into the future.
Warm regards,
Paul.
Is being an a-list important? Come on, the majority of us do it because it’s fun, not for marketing reasons. Well fun, or an ego trip (usually both — the same reasons I’m now coding for subText).
Is it really a blogging confab, or a meeting of people wanting to rub shoulders with Robert and yourself? (Personally I want to see how much I could get a custom blog card design from you for )
Like some other bloggers, I don’t affirm myself as being English. I am, of course, but I tend to live in the American world when online. My first three years of blogging was on .com domains with little way to tell I’m English, and even though I’m now on a .co.uk, most of the stuff I rave on about is US-centric.
You’re right, of course, but I don’t think it’s blogosphere specific.. it’s specific to everything on the net. The US is the primary Internet culture for English speaking users, but I don’t mind it that way.
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