One of the stats that we use to amaze our clients with a couple of years ago as we demonstrated the power of the internet was that three quarters of Koreans have met someone in the real world whom they had first got to know online.
At the time it wasn't just the greybeards shaking their heads but almost everyone, and invariably I would be the only in the room who had gone through the virtual looking glass (on two disastrous dates via datingdirect.com, and that was before they 'guaranteed' your success...)
This attitude already seems antiquated, at least to those in the industry, although it was only last week that I first introduced myself as my username 'benny008'. Of course I felt like a tool as I did so, but he only knew me through Twitter and a discussion on his blog, so had I said Ben Mason, he would have replied 'so what?' (lots of people do..)
Our encounter was at the Tuttle club, formerly the more self-explanatory Social Media Cafe (and which emerged out of / broke away from the London chapter of the Social Media Club which we used to house back when i was at Fleishman Hillard).
I never managed to find the time to attend the Tuttle daytime meet-ups while agency-side due to the usual pressure of clients, meetings and new business - intra-industry networking and keeping on top of breaking technology and trends was always the first thing to be dropped as the one thing that no-one was screaming at you to do.
So it wasn't until February that I managed to get myself down to the ICA of a Friday morning, ironically the same week that neuro-scientist Susan Greenfield released her findings that social media is potentially detrimental to the brain. Her report suggested that as our brain is affected by the environment that we exist in, and as we now are spending a lot of time online this is effectively 're-wiring our brains'. Of course humanity is still evolving and every parent that I have met recently admits that they are astonished at how comfortable generation y is with technology. But why does this have to be a bad thing?!
The Tuttle club is the ultimate rebuttal to her opinion that social networking online makes us less sociable in the real world: every week around fifty people come together to meet other like-minds and chat. Tuttle has just reached its first anniversary, in commemoration of which founder Lloyd Davis has published this semi-serious annual report to explain the premise behind it and what has been achieved in the first year.
But, of course, Tuttle is not the only group to meet in the real world to discuss the digital one. I thought it might be useful to gather those i know of together to help identify which may be useful...
The Shoreditch Twit is a monthly evening social event in East London, convened by Lewis Webb of Shiny Red.
The Dirty South Twit is what it says on the tin, the south London equivalent.
Aperitweat is an Italian version that apparently does actually come with free snacks
The Tuesdaytweetup - is a monthly tweet-up for the south of England
Open Soho - is a wider media and tech peeps networking monthly
Digital Lounge - started off just running free networking events on the last Wednesday of the month, but has now expanded to offer paid for courses too
Cwoffee - doesn't really admit to what it's for - the explanation on facebook says ' Russell's coffee mornings were such good fun - I miss them, and am keen to put one on myself.' In fact I don't recognise anyone who attends, so maybe I've invited myself to this
Open Coffee is a global networkof entrepreneurs , London's weekly gathering is at the UCL
Creative Coffee Club was set up as a creative networking opportunity, but seems to have fallen by the wayside, alongside the Network of Networks that was dreamt up to bring some of the above together.
The coffee club may be replaced to some extent by the forthcoming Dark Mountain Project, although it looks like that will have a slightly more ambitious scope than just networking. And to me this seems the next step that more of these communities should look to take. Not necessarily starting a new artistic / political movement like said mountain, but to create just a little more structure, to facilitate just a little more active collaboration between their like-minded membership, and to make it slightly easier for others to come in and find what they need from the community.
Of course, as with all things social media driven, the tricky bit is to create a structure without losing the fluidity and organic feel. And ultimately it is to make that structure something that can *whisper* make money. The paradox is that no-one in social media wants to feel like they are selling-out (let alone being exploited), while at the same time almost everyone you speak to feels like they could be making more money from it.
More on this soon. For now, I'm sure there are plenty more meet-ups out there, let me know and I'll add them to the list. And if you want to make your own there is always the Twtvite application or the older-skool Meetup.com or Upcoming.org...
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Posted by: watchfriends | June 07, 2009 at 11:06 AM