Chinwag Summer Party :: 5 July 2007
What a beautiful setting. Hats off to the Chinwag Big Summer '07 crew for choosing Imperial College for the setting of its big bash. After a fairly swift entry to Beit Quad (despite queue rumours that it was imminently to be a one-in one-out affair), Jonny and I headed straight to the bar.
Unfortunately, it took us twenty minutes of queuing at the bar to obtain our liquid refreshment and yet another fifteen minutes to get access to the BBQ. However, lamenting the size of the queues made for a good base for striking up a conversation. It was great to meet Steve Simmonds of RARE Design Associates who gave us some good tips on the viral campaign Mesh is planning in time for the Founding Members' launch at the end of August. He also commented that it was the first time he had been to a party where there was a queue in the men's toilets! The venue was rammed and the queues were quite tedious, but in true British "everyone in it together" style, we all managed to get on with the "Network Q" approach to the evening.
Jonny and I were also fortunate enough to hook up with Matt O'Neill from Cordovan who is an extremely friendly guy with a wealth of great contacts in the Web 2.0 scene. We look forward to developing a great friendship with him and to welcoming him to the launch party. He struck me as a guy who likes a beverage or two and, Matt, if you're reading, Spitz has an outdoor area where you can puff to your heart's content!
Once we had digested the delectable BBQ delights, we were also lucky to meet both Raj Anand and Jack Fairhall from Kwiqq - the social website builders from Brighton. Their tale is a most inspiring one and we really like what they have set out to do - it lends an enormous amount of strength to the Mesh concept - niche social networking is here to stay, it seems. We look forward to setting up a meeting with Raj and Jack to discuss developments in the scene and potentially collaborate in the future. These guys are ones to watch in the London Web 2.0 arena.
Another Brighton boy was checking out the London scene that evening - Alan Newman of Sensible Development who was keen to learn more about Mesh and was very positive about our future success. We look forward to bouncing some ideas off him.
It was also good to bump into Huw Leslie of Blognation UK who mentioned that he'd like to grab an interview with us some time. That would be a great opportunity and we would relish any chance to get a mention on a Sam Sethi creation.
In all, a great evening was had - it is always a good feeling when you meet people you want to meet again. We continue to mellow in the magic of Mesh and we feel very fortunate to have received such resoundingly superb feedback from everyone we speak to about Mesh.
Our next task is to set about consolidating all the contacts we have made over the last few weeks. The last thing we want to do is have a stack of business cards without nurturing the relationships we have started. We have met some really amazing people at the cutting edge of new media in London. Next up is meetings ahoy - left, right and centre - every spare moment not spent in our legal jobs is 100% dedicated to Mesh. Rock 'n' Roll.
Mesh would like to take this opportunity to thank Chinwag and the kind sponsors - Adobe, Agency.com, Channel 4, Neutralize and Purple for an great evening bringing together unique people in a unique venue. Well done.
