Today is Mashable.com‘s 5th birthday, and to celebrate five years of reporting on all things social media, hundreds of ‘Mashable Meetups’ have been organised to take place all over the world, and I attended today’s one in Leeds.
About 20-30 people attended the Leeds #mashmeetup which took place in The Living Room on Greek Street in the centre of Leeds. At the meetup around 20 people stood up and each had 60 seconds to talk about social media. Be it a plug for their own company, some work they’ve done for a client or even just a point of view on a particular subject, each got up and spoke passionately about their chosen subject.
This was the first social media event I’ve attended, and also the first bit of networking I’ve done, and I have to say, I rather enjoyed it. I met a variety of people working in all aspects of online PR, SEO, web-design, and even more traditional aspects of PR and publishing.
It was really interesting listening to the different people’s views and plugs for their chosen company and idea that they talked about for all of 60 seconds.
One gentleman talked about how social-media needs to go back to it’s roots and become more personal, more about the people, whereas someone else talked about how they feel that current PR courses at university are using outdated teaching methods, so what will her degree be worth in three years time?
After everyone (except me – I was just there to watch and learn) did their 60 seconds, the compere – and Managing Director of Wolfstar – Stuart Bruce asked a couple of people back onto the mic to talk about their chosen subject for a few minutes more. Two people were selected, but only the first person got to talk.
The first of the ‘finalists’ talked about how traditional PR needed to learn from new online PR skills, and vice-versa, and although that conversation was only due to last five or ten minutes, the conversation evolved into many different subjects, and before we knew it we were talking about the education system failing current PR-studies students, and how social-media people need to look outside of their industry to learn how to do their job better.
As someone who takes an active interest in social-media whilst not being in the actual industry, it was a fascinating evening. I learned so much, especially talking afterwards with the different people at the event. But more than that, it also inspired me to learn even more; to learn about the any different aspects of social-media, about the theory, about what makes it tick.
And even though it was £3.50 for a bottle of Peroni, I’m totally glad I attended the first monthly Mashable meetup in Leeds. I’ll definitely be going again.
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mat Murray, Mat Murray and Phylecia Wakeman, conversation matters. conversation matters said: RT @matmurray: RT @pwakeman: missed the #mashmeetup in #leeds last night? @matmurray does a pretty good synopsis: http://bit.ly/bTkUcw [...]
[...] last night have already appeared this morning, Matt Murray’s post and sum up of the evening here and Matt Saunders’ post on Digital Fusion Magazine here. My blog post was also mentioned on [...]
[...] on from Matt Murray’s excellent round up of the Leeds Mashable Event which took place last night at the The Living Room on Greek Street Leeds, hosted by Wolfstar [...]
Hi Matt!
Glad you liked the event, I thought it was a really good night too and demonstrated just how much social media and tech talent there is in Leeds and how willing they are to engage and debate issues.
I also learnt a lot from the night, it was great hearing from those with so much experience battling it out!
Hopefully there will be another similar event in the future!
Clare
Cheers Clare. For my first social media event I thought it was great. Hopefully there'll be many more like it. @Mashable says that yesterday's events were the start of monthly meetups – do you know if last night's event will be as regular as that?
No idea how I managed to not hear about this, looks like I missed a great evening.
Sounds like a good do. Might have to head across next time.
You heard of Bettakultcha, Mat? Similar(ish) format, driven largely by Twitter, I reckon. I went to the second one and had a reet good evening.
Link: http://bettakultcha.blogspot.com/
I really enjoyed last nights meet-up too. Sorry I couldn't stay longer. As an outsider to the PR profession it was very interesting to hear Leeds industry's thoughts on social media.