MIR Mobile Mixer London: Brilliant, thanks for coming!

Thank you to everyone who came along to the rather funky Charlotte Street Blues bar in London’s NoHo (“North Soho”). It’s been a long time since we’ve done an event here at MIR for an array of reasons, principally because I’ve been in and out of the country like a yoyo, so I was really missing the opportunity to meet and connect with some of the finest mobile minds the city has to over.

I was staggered by the number of developers there tonight. In some cases I found myself face-to-face with some of the market’s hippest actual developers. I mean people who *actually* programmed their applications. In other cases, I was hearing from commissioners — companies who count themselves as ‘developers’ but who don’t actually physically code. Either way it was absolutely fascinating.

I was delighted to meet the other geniuses in the industry too — the backroom boys and girls who make it all work, whether it’s PR, operators, venture funding or smart management.

I showed off the nifty MiFi mobile wireless hotspot. And quite a few of us fawned ridiculously over Dominic Travers’ shiny new HTC Hero from Orange. Which reminds me, I’ll need to talk to some operators and manufacturers next time and get a few toys along to play with. For instance I’m sure the chaps from Blackberry will drop us over one of their new devices for an upcoming event.

To the venue, then.

I kept an open mind when Jay Fenton of HowlerTech suggested the Charlotte Street Blues bar. He said it had ‘a nice upstairs’ that you could set aside and that it’d be ‘a good choice’. Even though Jay can multiplex a million continuous voice streams with just a wiggle of his eyebrow, you never know.

I never doubted you Jay! It was a wicked location. Brilliant. If you’re aiming to hold an event there, certainly think about it.

I got there for 5pm (on account of the strangely empty traffic on the journey from Chiswick) and parked right-up outside. The top section of the bar, part of which overlooks the stage, was entirely empty. I setup the camera and ordered a drink, before one of the venue managers, Chris, popped by to say.

“You’re over here,” he said, beckoning to the rather cool room at the back of the upper floor, “And you have your own bar.”

“Nice,” I said, thinking about the Mobile Industry Review audience and their collective penchant for a decent amount of high calibre alcohol, “This will do nicely.”

I sat back and took a look around. What a chilled place it was. Very, very chilled. There was a small bit of background music playing away at the time — Chris explained that the music would start around 8/830pm so I steeled myself for some ear-splitting live noise. I’m pleased to report that — yes, when the music did begin, it was loud, but bearable. Especially if you popped into the bar area. But for filming? No. that was a slight issue.

I didn’t want to do too much filming from 6-8pm because there were so many people arriving and so many people I wanted to say hi to. But next time, I will insist — as I met a lot of people that I’d have liked to bring to you in the virtual flesh here on MIR. As I type, the camera is transferring the HD video of the evening that I managed to capture.

Indeed the Isomob chaps suggested that next time we begin the event at 3pm.

“Everyone won’t have a problem leaving early if it’s for a business event,” was one of the comments that I subscribe to. I think next time we’ll definitely do Charlotte Street Blues, but we’ll start at, say, 3pm — and anyone who can, should come along whenever they can. That’ll give me more of an opportunity to film people and also listen more.

The quality of the conversation was extremely high — fantastic — thank you everyone who took the time to come along.

Standby for the videos — and, if you’d like to keep updated with details on the next event, please join this Facebook Group.