Bags, Bingo & Blogging - Social Media Camp London 08

Coming out of King's Cross Tube station on my way to Social Media Camp, I spotted some London Underground moquette (seat upholstery) out of the corner of my eye. You don't normally see moquette above your head like that and luckily I managed to get my camera out in time to take the picture below:


He was going in the same direction as me, so at crossing I took a clearer shot of the bag. Fortunately I wasn't quite stalky enough to find out where he was going afterwards, although he didn't head into St Pancras International station. I kind of hoped he was on some sort of trainspotting convention and that the moquette bag was filled with a flask of tea & sandwiches.

Spotting that guy & snapping the picture with a view to blogging, was power to the course for the rest of the day at the Social Media Camp. No blogger or "social media" person should be without their bag of tricks of a digital camera, mobile phone, notebook & an curious eye for the unusual amongst the mundane.

It was a great day where around 100 people interested in blogs & blogging, social networks, vlogs, podcasting, online communities, lifecasting, Web 2.0, avatars, ARG & other online buzzwords could hang out, share stories and present stuff.

I re-did my session from Bar Camp London last weekend and as promised here are the slides on Blogging Breakdown & How to Avoid it. It's basically some tips on how to try to keep people interested & engaged in blog (particularly if you've been writing one for years). Along with a number of slides from Technorati's recent & excellent "State of Blogosphere" report which show how blogs are bigger & just as powerful and possibly more influential than Facebook & other online social networks. Thanks to all who came along to see it.

If you look at Twitter & read similar blogs to me you'll see lots of reports & blog posts about all the sessions and the day itself. I really enjoyed the discussion about How not to get F**ked by Social Media led by the wonderful Girl with a One Track Mind. However, a highlight for me was right at the end. The animated faces below were also gripped.


It was all for a game of Bingo. But there weren't any bingo wings, dabbers and old ladies. This was Buzzword Bingo or Social Media Bingo, where we all filled out our cards with a number of Web 2.0 buzz words selected from the boards:


The words were then picked from a basket and we had to devise a "start-up" pitch or sentence including two of the words & people marked them off on their sheets.


As with normal bingo the first with a line got a prize and there were also prizes for a full house. Emma Persky & Utku Can did a fantastic job of organising this and I probably annoyed the hell out of my Twitter followers as I'd been asked to Tweet the "pitches" which you can just about see on the big screen in the photo above.


The lucky winners, some pictured above won some MOO Business Cards and a tour of Channel 4's office.

Thanks to Vero aka That Canadian Girl for organising a great day and to the sponsors for the brill food, drinks, schwag & venue at the Wallacespace. Also thanks to Zemanta for the blogging badges that I nabbed at the end of the day.


I've been very quietly using Zemanta on my blog since it launched in the spring of this year. It's got much, much better over the last few months. Essentially it's a plug-in which supports most blogging platforms and suggests appropriate links and creative commons photos, right as you type your blog post.

So now, in my blogger dashboard, I'm seeing photos about Twitter, wikipedia links to King's Cross and even links to old blog posts I've made myself about similar subjects. They automatically refresh the more you type and saves a whole lot of Googling or searching to find links for your posts.

A few more of my picture from the Social Media Camp London are on Flickr. Unsurprisingly, I won't actually wear the "Warning Fashion Blogger" badge in public as I'd never get away with another Tube Fashion Victim picture in my life!

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Monday, October 06, 2008 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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