If you’re in London on Sunday (July 5), hope you’ll be able to join us at the Traveling Geeks Tweetup at JuJu on King’s Road in London’s Chelsea district. We’re expecting about 120 to 180 people to turn out so that we can do a meet and greet and thank them for all the British hospitality we’ve been receiving (and most of us haven’t even left the States yet!).
The Geeks on hand will be: Howard Rheingold, Craig Newmark, Robert Scoble, Meghan Asha, Susan Bratton, Ayelet Noff, Sarah Lacy, Tom Foremski, Renee Blodgett, Jeff Saperstein, Sky Schuyler — and somehow I wangled my way into the trip.
Free food and drink! The cover charge is just to cove the costs of the venue, food and an open bar (until the money runs out!).
A highlight of the Tweetup will be these giveaways:
From Intel: A free Netbook and MID
Intel — a major sponsor of the trip — is donating two cutting-edge devices:
• The Acer Aspire One netbook, featuring the mighty Intel Atom processor and sporting an 8.9-inch screen (pictured at top). We’ll be handing this one out during a drawing (don’t forget to drop your business card into the bowl!) some time between 6:30 and 7:30 pm.
• A very cool UMID mbook M1 (retail value $599), powered by an Intel Atom 1.33GHz, natch (pictured at right). I got to play with one on Wednesday and was impressed by how light and portable it is — only 0.69 pounds! — while still capable as a Windows-powered Internet device. The winner will receive this in the mail by mid-July.
Intel is also loaning us two other MIDs for use during the trip: the Aigo MID and BenQ. Thanks, Intel!
From Symbian: Everyone gets a T-shirt!
Symbian Ltd, a software development and licensing company that produces the smartphone operating system Symbian OS, is giving away door prizes at the Tweetup. All attendees get a goody bag (cloth reusable shopping bag) with the following items:
- Symbian Tshirt (100 medium, 100 large)
- Symbian Pen and Notepad
With mobile devices playing such a large role during our trip, we’ll be hearing more about Symbian during the week
Register now!
Register for the Tweetup here. And, pssst, use this Discount Code and you’ll get in for half price: GeekFriend
The registration page contains a map of the location. There will be free wi-fi on both floors.
The Tweetup’s sponsors are NESTA, The Conversation Group, Intel and the Symbian Foundation, with help from Firefly Communications for coordination and support!. A special shout-out and thank you to Ted Shelton of the Conversation Group for pulling this together, with help from Paul Walsh.
Oh, yes. What’s a tweetup? See my new site’s glossary.
Speaking of backstage, we now have all of the geeks equipped with Flip UltraHD cameras, and we have two professional cameraguys who will shoot footage – one of these being sponsored by Rackspace Building43.com and the other being provided locally in London. We have agreed to share all of our footage amongst ourselves, so I expect to see some pretty interesting shots, interviews, and to spend many many many hours viewing, logging and then editing, especially upon my return. While we’re on the road we will be busy from 7am to 10pm every day, so there will be little time for editing. Instead, you can expect to see more “live” video and photos on-the-spot and less edited footage.
What’s the special sauce in marketing? In the case of Renee Blodgett, it’s a creative approach combined with a lotta hard work. Getting ready to go to London with the Traveling Geeks (which Renee co-founded), she’s working day and night to get a client site launched, while at the same time she’s bringing a new sponsor on board and also trying to make sure that 8 geeks who are arriving a day early will have their hotel rooms all arranged. I was able to spring Renee long enough for a dinner last week, but wow has she been burning the midnight oil to get ready for this trip!
Although I just recently returned from Internet Week New York, I’m about to set foot on another exciting, new adventure. From July 5 to July 10, I’ll be traveling around London together with my Geeky friends. aka 