Blogology

I was at the London bloggers meetup yesterday evening and it was a brilliantly organised event, I think fun was had by all! It was sponsored by Smirnoff and we were invited to the Diageo company bar, and they have a very nice bar (Thinking about it, well, yes you would expect them to have a nice bar... But hey , I don't take things for granted ;o)

The PR agency Splendid organised it (with Andy, thanks!) in the context of their promotion for Smirnoff and a particular drink, the Moscow Mule - which is essentially vodka, ginger ale, a pinch of ginger and a squeeze of lime. Quite nice, even though I'm not a big fan of ginger in drinks.

I think the best part was that they had a sort of fact sheet about each one of us and our blogs and the Diageo professional mixologists (bartenders in normal speak) prepared a special cocktail for each of us based on our blogs (and on the base for the moscow mule - so, vodka and ginger). They were really great and I think they had fun doing it too. Really nice touch!

Neil just posted about interacting with online communities, and here is a good example of how to do it well, in my opinion at least. And seeing the great feedback on the meetup page, lots of others agree - and most of these people also are professional bloggers, work in marketing, PR, social media, etc...

By the way, we also had lots of food served, so goo in the spirit of drink responsibly! I would have loved to say that it went absolutely berserk crazy with drunken and wasted bloggers dancing on the tables that had to be thrown out of the premises but it wasn't the case - all very civilised lounge like cocktail night. Actually talking about it, that happened at Twestival last week - a Swiss twitterer was thrown out of the bar after having thrown up in the bar (I met him outside while he was recovering).

Joke aside, iris has Brown-Forman as a client (Jack Daniel's among other brands) and I kept thinking they should really be taking some more risks in the digital space because Diageo is seriously winning points here! I guess here is an opportunity for me to raise some points ;o).

Apart from the PR part, it was brilliant to meet more London bloggers, always a pleasure to hear about different people's interests, good conversations! Some cool pics on Lolly's Flickr stream, including my personalised cocktail and me.

To finish we all had a goody bag with a bottle of vodka, so I'm going to be able to organise a little cocktail night - and I also need to have some more people taste my special rums - particularly the pistachio, almond and honey one which has been macerating for 3 months now!