There's a Vodafone User Communities party today in London...
I had an email last week from someone representing Vodafone User Communities.
Here’s the text:
Dear Ewan,
I am very pleased to invite you to an exclusive after-party being hosted by Vodafone User Communities. Come join us on the 24th September, 2009 (Thursday) from 5:00pm until late for the best party happening in London. You can look forward to meeting interesting people, great food and drinks, and fantastic music from Aret, our own songbird.
Please mark your day and RSVP to this email with your contact number and we will send the details to follow.
Look forward to seeing you!
I was mystified.
I wrote back with this:
Hi there, I’d be delighted to attend. Is there anything I can tell my audience about, yet?
No response.
Until today.
I’ve had another email telling me the venue details:
Dear Ewan,
We are very excited to have you confirmed for the party tomorrow night. Festivities will begin at 5:00 PM and run through the night. Please find the address of the venue, XXXXXXXXX, included below.
I’ve obviously removed the venue name because I’m assuming some kind of implied confidentiality of sorts is appropriate.
My problem is that I’m not entirely sure what Vodafone User Communities is.
I don’t think it’s the super-efficient eForum Team. I did a search for ‘party’ there and saw nothing relevant.
So I’m actually stumped.
Have you had similar?
I wonder what to expect.
If it was a PR thing, I’d have expected an eager and efficient PR professional waiting in the wings to respond to my ‘is there anything I can tell my audience’ point. Perhaps it’s one of these Vodafone Live music events? Or a Vodafone Betavine thing?
Who is our-very-own-Aret? Is this a user of Vodafone? Or perhaps a Vodafone Community Member? Or a MySpace next generation Katie Perry? I don’t know.
I thought I’d better do a Google.
I searched for Vodafone User Communities.
I found something!
I never knew this existed.
I clicked on ‘About’.
I go this:
Useful.
It appears to be a service managed by RealityDigital. Their logo’s on the bottom of every page. They must be providing the platform. Perhaps this User Communities thing is just *tooooo* new — so new, in fact, that there’s no about section yet?
I thought I better create an account and check this out.
I quickly registered. Here’s what I got after I completed the form:
It’s a private site, eh?
You what?
The number one result in Google for ‘Vodafone User Communities’ is a LinkedIn page:
So, a chap by the name of Bob Rapp is Head of User Communities at Vodafone. Here’s his LinkedIn page:
You’re number one in Google for your service name, Bob — I trust you have an alert for your name — as it’d be super if you could comment below and tell us (well, me particularly) what Vodafone User Communities is all about. Or point us in the right direction to find out more. Enquiring minds would like to know.
I’m rather interested. I guessed Bob’s email and added him on LinkedIn and I’ve sent him a note.
My interest is highly temporal too, given the fact that I’ve been invited to this thing this evening.
I’m sure a few other MIR readers have been invited. I know quite a few folk have been invited. If you’re going, let me know. I’ve a lot going on tomorrow evening but I’m aiming to drop by and find out more.
