Social Media Café this Morning in London

I spent this morning at the London Social Media Café, in Soho. This is a new 'prototype' event set up by Lloyd Davis, who came up with the idea along with Mike Butcher of TechcrunchUK. It was a really good morning, we packed out the top floor of the Coach and Horses and spent a good 3-4 hours connecting and discussing social media.

I found out about the event through the power of Twitter - I was following Mike Butcher who mentioned this morning that he might be going, I Googled it, found the wiki, Google group, Facebook group, and posts by both Mike and Lloyd and decided to go along.

The concept, still in development, is to find either a café or venue (or series of venues) with free wifi which allow social media types in London to come together to network, co-operate and have meetings. This morning was really about the networking, we're looking for somewhere next with multiple floors so that we can have a floor for working, floor for networking, floor for workshops etc.

There was a really good mix of people there, including Mitch McAlister from MySpace, a host of social media developers, consultants, marketers, investors, analysts, journalists, PR agencies and even civil servants. It's great to see that even the government are recognising the importance of social media in communication. As well as the great connections and loads of new follows on Twitter, I had some in-depth conversations on all aspects of social media, including branded application marketing, Twitter as a discussion tool, and Twitter as an Enterprise Tool. I also had a great conversation with Dan Light of PPC Interactive on how different social media tools are used for different types of relationship and varying levels of closeness.

If you're involved in social media in the UK and want to meet some like minds and get involved in the conversation, then join the groups and come along, it's a great event. Also, if you've got good venue suggestions or are interested in sponsoring the event then get in touch with Lloyd (link above), or you can contact me and I'll pass it on.

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UPDATE:

I do feel a bit guilty for not mentioning Thayer's truffles - these were pure coco and Trinidadian rum, and were quite simply amazing, honestly the most gorgeous chocolates I've ever had the pleasure of eating. Unfortunately she's refusing requests to go into production, and will only create them for occasional social media cafés - a big incentive to go to every single one, just in case.