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I’ve just got back from the West Midlands MeetUp in Evesham, tired but happy as they say. It was a great afternoon and well worth the effort of organising it.
We were a select band with a widely differing range of experience, and all kinds of different skill sets but it made for a harmonious whole and demonstrated the benefits of having these get togethers. I had met some of the guys before at the Manchester MeetUp in August last year and it was an absolute pleasure to see them again, as well as meeting some new friends and bringing online acquaintance into the real world. The range of topics discussed was huge, everything from deep philosophical debates on the transfer of the market place from the High Street to online, the pros and cons of wordpress, linking strategies, the intricacies of Google Analytics to ‘are the chips good’ - they were.
The five hours of continuous chatter was useful for everyone and we will definitely be repeating the experience with a discussion theme for the meetings as everyone felt this would be useful. I’d like to think some good relationships were forged today. There was a brief moment of silence for photos but that only served to emphasised just how much chat there was….
Left to Right - Tim, Lisa, Chris, Elaine hiding behind Chris, Sandy, Annette, Me, Enzo, Walter
I’ll be posting details of the next one in due course - and all are welcome - it will be worth the trip…
I’ve been threatening to do this for a while and have finally got it sorted! For anyone who has been to one of the MeetUps held all over the globe, you will know how beneficial they are - and fun too. I have happy memories of the Manchester MeetUp that launched the Thirty Day Challenge last year, not to mention the lunch that preceded it!
However, I digress…
The Date:- Saturday 21st February
The Time:- 12 noon onwards
The Place:- The Amber Bar, Evesham, Worcestershire - google map here
Easy access via train (direct line from London, Oxford) plenty of car parking within five minutes walk. The Amber Bar does reasonable food at reasonable prices.
Previous meetups have been for Immediate Edgers or Thrity Day Challenge participants and I suspect most people who come will have been involved in one or other, but anyone interested in Internet marketing is welcome…
Please leave a comment if you are thinking of coming so we have some idea of numbers.
It’s a well known fact that I have unbounded admiration for Seth Godin, what you probably don’t know is that I have spent the last few weeks and months becoming increasingly vitriolic in my tirades against the Numpties who preach doom, gloom and despondency in the various media - I am becoming the woman who shouts at the TV… it gets embarrassing after a while.
The reason I shout at the TV, in particular the BBC Breakfast TV programme’s Business Reports is that they see everything from it’s absolute worst possible perspective, they give huge credence and publicity to negative news and skate past anything good with a muttered aside. Then they return, with huge gusto, to full throated baying of doom laden forecasts. OK, I accept that things are not good, you would have to be blind to say that they are. But it is not all bad, there are ways forward and there are ways out. What you have to do is take action, not just cry into your Beer.
A brief video interview with Seth Godin was published on Mashable yesterday, it should be required watching for everyone in business, especially for those of us who have a bit of courage rather than being of the ‘cry into your Beer’ variety. In case you missed it, it’s here. I suggest that you also take a trip to his blog and look at some of the recent posts - expecially you guys at the BBC, perhaps then you can do something positive towards moving us forward rather than just digging a deeper hole for everyone to fall into.
This is a lovely little extension for Firefox for all those web builders out there - ColorZilla provides a whole raft of tools for analysing colors and so forth on websites. Very pleased to have this at my finger tips.
I have a plan for this year - it involves a major housekeep of all my sites (and there are an awful lot) which will end with many of them going by the wayside I suspect. I’m also revamping my vanity site, which hadn’t been touched in donkeys ages and which was really quite shameful. The new site will be a little bare to start with but will gradually become a directory of all my sites and work online. You may be surprised at what comes out of the woodwork….
There will be some reshuffling here on Mutterz as well, mainly in that it won’t be so neglected. I’ve started the tidying and revamping here today with the addition of some new social media contact links in the sidebar and also google friend connect. The video profile will be going soon as it’s a bit too dominating - so if you haven’t seen it yet, take the chance whilst you can. Why am I paying so much attention to the social side of things. It’s two fold. First of all, I’m a social animal and working online can be a lonely business. I find the twittering and the contact through various other social media an antidote to that isolation which leads nicely to the second reason.
I had a minor rant the other day about the proliferation of rubbish on the net and commented that the rise of social media would have an effect on this. I’m something of a cynic but my other half is even worse and muttered into his wineglass that it wouldn’t change anything and there would always be the lowlives that were out to screw us out of our hard earned money in return for their rubbish. I agree. However, amidst the press induced gloom and despondency about the economic situation, I have noted that most companies are reporting an increase in Online trading which is, to my mind, a natural result of the demise of the High Street shopping culture.
For some reason, we always like to shout when something goes wrong, or we feel hard done by. Sadly, we rarely shout so loud when something is good. The rise of social media is going to mean that people who are conned by the lowlives are going to shout, and the word is going to spread. People are going to polarise into groups where they feel they can trust people, and get good advice and guidance and they are going to use the ‘oh so easy’ social media in the ether. As mobile phones synch more and more with the net it is getting easier and easier to be in touch in so many ways. Being a part of the conversations is going to be so important for more reasons than I have space for here. That is why I am paying so much attention to the chat, and why I will continue to do so.
Do join in - I’d love to hear your views - there’s lots of ways to converse with me, just pick one of the nice shiny new buttons in the sidebar, or better still pick more than one and connect as a friend. I might be a grumpy old woman but I don’t bite!
