Last week I was lucky enough to get invited out to Dinner with Shel Israel (@ShelIsrael) Co-Author with Robert Scoble of “Naked Conversations” and now Author of “Twittervile, How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods” and Adrian Moss, Head of Head Web 2.0/SocMed Practice at Parity who was hosting Shel on his UK leg of the book launch (see my review here).
It was a chance encounter, I’ve been a virtual friend of Shel for a while, following his blog and tweets for ages, and was lucky enough to get some thoughts I had included in the Twitterville book. I had been looking forward to the chance to meet him at the Social Media Summit but a client engagement meant I wasn’t able to attend… an email dropped into my inbox early last week inviting me out to Dinner with Shel and Adrian the night before… #Win!
So I headed down to London last Wednesday night, found a great pub nearby for us to meet at, Somers Town Coffee House, somewhat fitting, relatively quiet, filled with lots of interesting people and a stack of conversations going on… So Shel and Adrian rocked up, we exchanged pleasantries and got the pints ordered, some jokes flowed and we sat down to what was going to be a great hour of frenetic chat about:
- Social Media
- The Midlands Car Industry
- Naked Conversations
- Family
- Twittervile
- Jobs
- Culture
- Public Speaking
That was a hell of a lot of subjects to cram it an hour or so, but as with great connections and platforms like twitter, it felt like I’d known these guys for years, just as Shel had said in a tweet early that day:
“Dinner w/ @soulsailor is another example of meeting an old friend for the 1st time, one of the things that makes twitter so very cool.”
It was a great pint and Shel is, just like it says on his business card, a “nice guy”..
So then it was off to Snazz Sichuan, check out the menu… it was SCARY and required a fair bit of effort from us all to find something that wasn’t going to kill us or make us regret it on the throne in the morning #BlameAdrianMoss was an apt hash-tag for the evening!
The reality was that there was some great food and beer at Snazz Sichuan, the staff were very courteous, and the conversation continued in the same vein as in the pub.. All in all it was a great night, it was an honour to meet Shel, it was good to see Adrian and we all had some very interesting conversations that need continuing…
There’s a hell of a lot of power and satisfaction in taking an online conversation offline… Go meet those virtual friends and acquaintances for the first time.
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