The best kind of nights, I’ve always found, are the ones where you end up in a completely unexpected place. Last night, for me, that unexpected place was a fascinating in-depth discussion of Belgian politics and media, and contrasting it with the UK.
This isn’t normally what I spend my nights down the pub doing, but then it’s also a neat illustration of why I enjoy going to the assorted social media meetups. Or in this case, Tweetup.
Or look what we’ve gone and done.
For a culture, that spends a fair bit of its life working online, social media types are, well, pretty sociable in the real world. For one thing, they throw great parties and hold regular meetups. One of the nicest things about Twitter and blogging meetups, is you can turn up and not know anybody and people will still, likely as not, know who you are. Even if not, you’ll at least have a topic of conversation to get you started, which is ideal for people such as myself who aren’t natural minglers.
My friend Steve deserves many hearty slaps on the back and no small amount of congratulations. Exeweb, the forum he created for Exeter City fans, recently celebrated its tenth birthday.
But this isn’t another Exeter City football post from me – Steve’s site is a perfect example of social media in action, and has been such years before the term social media was ever invented.
Going further, you could put forward a significant argument that Exeter City FC would not exist were it not for Exeweb. More of that in a minute.
And I’ve got a whole of host posts in my draft folder to prove it.
But then:
1. I got very busy with work.
2. I’ve been feeling a bit run down and not great.
3. I finally had the root canal done. This morning. Thank God for neurofen.
4. Tonight was provisionally pencilled in to do household chores, relaxing and blogging. But then a friend of mine mentioned her new flat didn’t have a working cooker.
If there’s one piece of pain I truly feel after spending three months with a barely functioning Baby Belling, it’s being without cooking space.
I’ve just got back from a fascinating evening down the pub catching up with an old friend of mine, who now happens to be working for a local newspaper and it wasn’t long before we got onto the topic of online video – something which forms part of his everyday job.
[Enters broken record mode]
What was really fascinating was to hear how his views matched mine and, at times, was even more vehemently critical of the efforts of some local newspapers when it comes to online video [1].
Chief amongst his criticisms were:
Soccerlens again. Why you shouldn’t write off Game 39 just yet.
Incidentally, I’ll be doing a weekly column on non-league/lower league football every Tuesday at Soccerlens, so if you’re one of the two readers on here who genuinely get excited when I start talking about football stuff, please do put it in your bookmarks or RSS feeds.
For non-football fans who read this blog (that’ll be the other eight) you can rest easy, and I may only occasionally post about visiting hell-holes of Britain in pursuit of the beautiful game. Did I tell you I’m off to Crawley on Tuesday?
So, I’m moving.
No, not this blog. I’m quite happy where it is, even if it is occasionally neglected, like a semi-feral cat.
Anyway, yeah, I’m moving. Not today, mind, or tomorrow. Actually, in about a month. But moving nonetheless.
Let’s start again. I’m not being particularly clear or coherent here. Much like Hugh Grant appearing in any film pre-About a Boy.
I’m moving (we’ve established that) to London (not established) in roughly about a month to start a new job.
When I was a student/wannabe journalist [1] I often got advice from actual journalists on the best way to get work experience and thus further in the industry.
All of it had a ring of truth to it. A large amount was ever-so-somewhat patronising and an even large amount was incredibly cynical.
Earlier this week I got asked by an aspiring journo fresh out of college for help and advice in getting work experience with the company I work for. Having re-read what I sent her, it is rather cynical, ever-so-somewhat patronising.