Unlimited Drinks -- a review

‘Er, where are you Ewan?’ asked Alex, SMS Text News blogger. He was calling from Number3Bar, just off Regent Street — the venue for last night’s Unlimited Drinks.

“I’m, right, I’m getting some labels,” I replied, my N95 thrust against my cheek as I strode purposefully across the Euston Station concourse.

“Ok,” I heard Alex say, “It’s just — well there’s 12 people here already.”

Shit. It was 5.55pm — the event was due to begin in five minutes. Everything else was pretty well planned. The venue was ready and waiting, my cash was smoking gently, already sat in the venue’s bank account, the SMS Text News roller-banner was collected and, particularly important, I had got my hair cut. Right on.

I explained to Alex that I was in Euston (I heard him start with an “Errrrrr” and explained I was jumping in a cab shortly). I bombed it across to the WH Smiths and picked up some labels. Sticky ones. That was the only thing I had negated to fix for the evening.

I arrived at 6.10pm and promptly setup the roller-banner. That was an idea I had on Tuesday. I thought it would be rather cool to have a big poster proudly displaying SMS Text News to everyone who arrived — so you knew where you were. It was a bit of an arse to unravel, but with Alex and Hetty helping me out, we managed to get the poster setup.

Then I quickly hit the bar and got a beer, said hi to the early lot in a haze of hello-hello-hello then fixed myself to the front of venue at the door to welcome people. Alex stood next to me, guest list in hand. I was confident that although 130 people had squeezed their way on to the list, the 120 capacity of Number3Bar wouldn’t be sorely tested.

The first problem: Labels.

So 14 people were already in the venue availing themselves of the fair use policy unlimited drinks. Do I go round and demand they put on labels? Just then, Stephen Wadeley, Wholesale Telecoms Sales for AQL rocked up. Screw labels, I thought, I need to greet people. Instead of demanding Stephen write out a label, I instead shook his hand, introduced him to Alex — and then we began what became a running theme across the evening: The business card shakedown.

My memory is brilliant in some cases but it doesn’t perform incredibly well I need it to. Therefore I was asking everyone who arrived if they had a card.

A few people were a bit shocked, initially thinking I was demanding to see their invitation card. Difficult, you see, as no one had an invitation card. Their minds were, I think, put at rest by Alex brandishing SMS Text News business cards. Quickly I swapped to greeting people at the door, then asking them if they had a business card.

I am not entirely sure if this was the appropriate strategy since it meant that the poor folk arriving looked like they were being shaken down by me, as they patted their pockets, dug into their purses and generally hunted for their business cards.

It was all for a good cause though. Because I will shortly present a who’s who of the evening. This won’t necessarily feature people whose card I didn’t get due to memory issues. If you should be in this list and you’re not currently, it is entirely an oversight by me and I need your help — I asked one or two people to email me to say hi this morning so I’d remember to include them. If you’re not there, mail me, so I can update the list.

Kudos, by the way, to the collection of people tried out the ‘o2 data rates suck’ secret password on the doorman. Unfortunately he (and she) weren’t quite playing ball and looked eminently confused when I tried to explain.

Stephen Wadeley of AQL was at the top of the business card pack when I extracted them from my pocket. You all know AQL, right?

Richard Hyndman of Refresh Mobile was standing tall and accompanied by the Whately Dude — that is, James Whatley — also of Refresh Mobile (but shortly joining SpinVox). Richard graciously allowed James to take a screenshot of their new service, Mippin, so I could blog it here. Mippin is definitely looking fascinating:

I met quite a few Ed’s last night and proceeded to confuse them. First up was Ed Cave, Head of Mobile Products for ipiarko limited or information mobile.

A shit-hot-smartly-dressed Adam Bird of Esendex presented his credentials to me. Adam is Managing Director of the mobile services company who are, incidentally, based in Nottingham. Nice one for coming down Adam. I’ve been reading Adam’s blog and following Esendex for quite some time now.

Just then, a crowd of good looking people flowed in through the door headed by Lauren of Sonus PR with her talented comedian/actor boyfriend who, … yes… screw it, I can’t remember his name. But he’s a wicked guy. The rest of the Sonus team followed, resonating friendliness and enthusiasm. I said hi to Chevan, James and Helen just as Benedict Evans of NBC Universal popped by.

Benedict used to work in strategy at Orange and had some rather illuminating points about the way the media industry and the mobile industry view each other. He’s planning and commercial development manager for NBC Universal’s Digital Assets section.

Andrew Grill of Seeker Wireless didn’t have a card but brilliantly agreed to email me to remind me. They’ve developed some really neat stuff – essentially (and I’ll blog more on this) they’ve got a small java applet that sits on the sim card that, when installed in an Operator’s network, delivers extremely accurate and reliable HomeZone detection. So they can charge/route calls appropriately — and, as a result, offer some compelling location based possibilities. They’ve won some huge deals but alas, not publishable yet.

I then remember connecting briefly with Alex Meisl, Chairman of Sponge Group (“from concept to handset”) — I had a ton of questions for Alex about Sponge but the crowd was surging and more and more arrived so Alex graciously let me continue welcoming. I made a mental note to take Alex for lunch. At some point. Especially as they’re at number 11 Charlotte Mews, not far from my favourite Pizza Express on Charlotte Street.

Martyn Davies of Faberooney handed me one of the sexiest mini-business cards I’ve ever seen (with chillies pictured on the back). His card also had a link to his blog. Very swish.

Nick Ris, top guy — at least, it seems that way to me — at MX Telecom, arrived looking dapper in a wicked shirt — the dapperness was enhanced but the funky umbrella he was sporting. If you ever meet Nick, do ask him for a business card. He’ll flop out these half-sized cards at you… but it’s not the card that deserves the attention, it’s the content. He puts his mobile on the card, that’s fine. What I found fascinating was the line on the bottom saying ‘Find me on linkedin/facebook…’ along with an extensive list of other social media services. Smart.

I need to do that.

“I’m Ewan. Find me on Google.”

I might even put that on a business card. Heh.

Right!

Leanne Rose, Marketing Coordinator of Mobyko (“Your mobile home”) arrived with her colleague whose name, annoyingly, I can’t quite remember. I’m just rubbish. I thought of writing it down on Leanne’s card but I reckoned that might make me look a bit psycho.

In quick succession I welcomed Andy Ashburner, wicked designer at Caffeinehit. Charlotte Browne, freelance TV producer and corporate video genius arrived straight after Andy. Charlotte has made the videos for no less than two of my recent companies (see one at www.neoone-impulse.com and the other at www.dcmi.co.uk). I wasn’t sure if she was going to be able to make it as she’s been spending weeks sorting out some work for the BBC.

Speaking of BBC, I spotted Sarah Prag, Head of all things Podcasting for the BBC, arriving in through the door. I am a huge fan of the BBC’s brilliant range of podcasts and Sarah listens really patiently as I run through my list of likes. My favourite right now? Today in Parliament (well, it’ll be back on shortly) and the Scott Mills Daily.

Fiona Goldsworthy of Lewis PR arrived shortly after, with her colleague Ceiri O’Driscoll of Slice PR. At this point I really was feeling quite self conscious about asking for business cards from people who had literally just stepped one foot inside the bar. Fiona and Ceiri were very gracious. Thanks ladies. I was beginning to develop a ‘thing’ asking for cards. I felt like I was doing inverted doorstepping. Still, it helps with the memory.

Patrick Smith, Roberta and James of Sonus PR appeared at the doorway — with Patrick wearing a really swish Sonus PR tshirt (and brandishing one for me, right on Patrick!). Patrick, as a sponsor of the event, rightly joined me at the door with Alex for a little while to help me welcome people in — and to make my business card shakedown look a little bit more…er… welcoming.

I turned and saw Hetty, (She runs one of our companies, Eventscope, which provides online networking services for conferences and events). Hetty was striding up toward me demanding to know where the food was.

Ah.

Yes.

There was a wardrobe malfunction with the food. Or a food malfunction. Or a miscommunication. Whatever — the reality was that, standing at the door, I saw zero food. Nothing. Nada. I was reliably informed that others around the bar and the inner sanctum of the venue were regularly plied with all sorts of super delicacies. She strode off hunting for the manager to verify this — I’m indebted to Hetty for helping me finalise the event details.

Ian Price, Managing Director of Broca Plc had, it appears, come all the way from Lancashire — although I didn’t get time to ask him if Broca had an office down south. Like everybody I met, I wanted to talk more to Ian, but I didn’t get a chance as the crowd was thickening fast. I took his card and dashed off to greet Darren King Senior Consultant at Redbox Telecoms Group. Darren was sporting a nicely cut suit — “Where’s the Ameo?” I asked, surveying his torso and not seeing any large bulges in his jacket pockets.

“Don’t have that one any more,” Darren explained — which, is good news. It’s a rather well specified HTC device, the Ameo, just, not good storing in your suit pocket.

Mark Gibson, Commercial Manager for Advanced Telecom Services also gave me his card — I’d been checking out their site a few days prior and typically (it was becoming a bit of an arse now) I didn’t have much time at all to ask Mark more about his company. Another time.

Just as well. I was managing to say hi to everyone briefly before another person arrived.

Nick Shadbolt shot in through the door. Senior Account Executive at Incentivated, I immediately liked Nick’s confident approach and smart style. I took him aside for a moment (the door was curiously empty at this point) and congratulated him and the team at Incentivated for a) doing really good work in the mobile marketing industry and b) for doing good work at getting the message out. I find it infinitely depressing meeting companies who are doing some phenomenally exciting things in mobile, but don’t talk about it. Or, for some reason, don’t think anyone’s interested (Cue a cut to me hopping up and down on the spot frustrated). The team at Skywrite Communications — principally Elena — do a good job of keeping the communication flow active at Incentivated.

I caught sight of the delightful Kersti Klami peering in the door and went over to welcome her. Kersti, Client Executive at Fuse PR was joined by colleague and Client Director, Alex Lacey. I bid them welcome and insisted that we had to meet up soon before I spotted Mark Tynan at the door.

Mark Tynan is Chief Executive at ShopQwik, SMS Text News sponsor (although, due to a design malfunction, that is, a new site layout, ShopQwik aren’t quite on the site at the moment … but will be). With ShopQwik, you can book a hotel or a flight, almost anywhere in the world, within 60 seconds, using your mobile. It’s a brilliant service and I was pleased to see Mark had brought along some ShopQwik flyers and, with colleague Paul, a good few devices to demonstrate the service to all and sundry. Mark’s a class act. I love the ShopQwik concept and service.

Ben Harvey arrived looking dapper in a pinstripe jacket and jeans. He’d travelled all the way from deepest, darkest Hampshire to be with us, so I was delighted to see him. Ben is our Friday-afternoon-at-3pm columnist and normob (that is, normal mobile user) however there won’t be a column today on account of his harrowing train journey back to Winchester. Watch out for one next week though.

Darren Cockburn has not yet got his Channel4 business cards but, thoughtfully, had grabbed a load of compliments slips. I’ve known and worked withth Darren for a long time — he was previously at Disney and now, well, I can’t quite recall his exact job title but it’s words to the effect of ‘buys and invests in companies for Channel4’. I think that’s reasonably accurate. He was on good form and looking well. I got a compliments slip from him with his email autographed on.

I bumped into Amir Azulay, Managing Director of Skillworks Interactive and his colleague Peter Broido, Director. Again I really wanted to take a bit of time to learn more about their company — a clue, perhaps, on the back of their business card: “Where people play people”.

Darryl Ashing, my frequent saviour, drifted calmly in about then. Darryl is partner at accountancy firm, Ashings, who specialise in accountancy and financial services for the high tech industry. If you’re looking for funding, he’s also got a good base of angels and early stage investors in his address book. He’s been my accountant for years. If you’d like an intro, just let me know.

I caught up with Sally Everitt of RFMO. Her company specialises in bespoke handset application development across Java, Symbian and Windows Mobile for organisations such as Nokia and Orange. Perhaps I should talk to Sally about getting a decent mobile blogging application written for my E61i?

Although I might not have my Nokia E61i for long after a chat with Claire Jones from Hotwire PR. Claire’s team represent companies such as Blackberry, MBlox and Acision. I collared Claire about Blackberry (Blackberry, she told me, just did their first billion dollar quarter) and asked her if she’d help Alex and I do a ‘Blackberry Week’ on SMS Text News. More on that later, hopefully.

It’s been a while since I saw Jeremy Freeman in the flesh. Although he’s worked on the web for years, his new company might not strike you as mobile related. It isn’t quite. The Bubble Shop sells all things bubble related! From bubble toys to champagne, bath products and fancy lighting. But Jeremy also still does a ton on the web and mobile. I didn’t get a chance to introduce Jeremy to Mark Tynan of ShopQwik — I did go hunting for Mark but couldn’t find him.

Alan Wood from Abraxas arrived and I got his card. As Managing Consultant, Search & Selection, for Abraxas, Alan had unfortunately not been retained to headhunt a leading mobile industry blogger whose name begins with the letter E. Shame 😉 However if you’re looking for a position in and around mobile, or if you’re looking to hire in the industry, it might be a good idea to talk to Alan.

I was pleased to see Hutchison (or 3UK) represented in the form of Gilad Novik and Elmer Zinkhann. I welcomed them in with open arms and pointed to the fair-use-policy free bar. There were quite a few 3UK fans in the house and I counted a good amount of 3-branded N95s and E65s. Good news.

I saw Dan Illet grinning at the door and sped over to extend my hand. As well as a noted freelance journalist (Claire from Hotwire PR: “Oh are you DAN ILETT?” — he’s famous), Dan is editor and founder of Greenbang.com. Greenbang covers information technology in the ‘green’ arena. We pick up quite a lot of news from them when they cover green mobile related issues.

Richard Walker, Director of Ragtime bounded into the bar and grasped my hand. Alas, I just didn’t get time to talk to him either. Another mental note: Find Richard, take him for lunch, find out more about Ragtime.

At this point I noticed a distinct increase in the volume of the music. The bar was push-room-only and packed with people and I guess it’s this point that venue staff like to put on thumping music. I’m not sure why, though it is almost certainly a pavlovian response to lots-of-people. I suddenly found myself beginning to shout and disengaged myself from conversation and hunted for the nearest barman. I got him to turn the music down. There’s nothing worse than having to scream HELLLOOOOOOOO at people. With the music stopped, the volume didn’t really go down much. It was still quite noisy with people talking — but that’s no bad thing. It’s when the DJ puts the volume up to 11 so that you can hear the music over the noise of people talking, that I begin to get annoyed.

I noticed food flying around. My one key issue for the next event is food. Focus on the food. It wasn’t good enough. The quality was, I think you’ll agree, ok. Not brilliant. The service – the delivery, well, I felt that wasn’t quite right. Apologies if anyone felt hungry. Whenever a waiter came out brandishing food they were set upon like pirañas. So 3 x 10 pizza deliveries across the evening is the way to go. Or something like that.

Relaxed about the music, I tipped my virtual hat to Alex Kerr of PhoneThing. I’ve seen Alex around (virtually) for ages — I know he’s been a reader for a lonnnng time. It was good to put a name to a face but, alas, I need more time to talk to him. And to everyone else.

But I had to focus on my host responsibilities.

“You’re shitting me?” I asked Geoff Wright as he arrived.
“No?” He said, handing me a business card as proof.
“You’re from BLYK? BLYK-Blyk? The free-operator Blyk? YOU WORK FOR BLYK?”
He nodded.

Geoff Wright is Campaign Producer at newbie operator, Blyk. They are, obviously, not quite operational as yet but they’re coming. Soon. I’ve been reading about them for ages. Now and again people drop the odd rumour (“They launch tomorrow” – you know, that sort of rumour, only, that was months ago), so I am delighted to hear they are still functioning and still healthy. I pleaded with Geoff for some sort of indication. I’ll need to get hold of the PR from Blyk and shoot them some questions.

Hollie Young of WebitPR flew past me occasionally until I managed to grab her and say hello.

“Do you realise your blogger Ben Harvey and I went to college together?” she asked.

Well I never. That’s pretty nifty. What are the chances of that? I’ve been getting emails daily from Hollie with anything telecom and mobile related — finally I met the girl-behind-the-name.

I managed to chat briefly with her colleague Jonathan before I was drawn away by the arrival of Vinny Hayes from Hotxt. They’ve got some rather interesting stuff cooking — I hope to blog more about that later on. Vinny heads up business development for Europe so he’s the guy to talk with if you’ve got some ideas about working with them.

Described by many, in the know, as one of the world’s foremost mobile developer geniuses (along with his colleague Jay — who is in France at the moment), Dan Lane arrived, soaked down one side of his jacket.

“I got shot, just for you,” he explained, describing how he’d come out of his apartment with his supersoaker fully loaded, only to have been caught by a waiting assassin. He’s been playing Streetwars — is that what it’s called? I think that’s it. It was brilliant to see Dan, not least so I could use his party trick on other unsuspecting SMS Text News readers.

Think you’re a tech geek? Well Dan Lane has nothing on you. Not unless you ALSO have an RFID chip embedded in your left arm. Yup. He wired up his old house so that the door opened when he waved his hand at the lock. That is seeeeeriously cool.

Dan works with Ed Hodges who arrived shortly after he did. Ed wasn’t soaken, instead he was slightly dazed, having just completed a track day at Silverstone, whacking his bike round corners at 200mph.

Robin Dhara arrived in a whirlwind of energy sporting a pinstripe jacket over a red jumper. I confessed to him that I’d never had the balls to do that, instead opting for the full pinstripe suit.

“Drinks at Ronnie Scotts later?” he asked, as I shook his hand.
What an arse. I had to get up early for a train the next morning so I had to decline, not before I gave him a slap on the back for coming up with a brilliant name for his PR company — Red Robin. I’ll need to find the link.

He pointed over at Stephen Holmes of design house, BloodyBigSpider, “It’s all his work,” Robin explained. I know Stephen of old. He’s done the branding and look and feel of a number of my companies now and he’s my go-to-guy for that sort of thing, so I was keen to get his impression on the new SMS Text News design completed by the chaps at Forty Media.

I glanced around and Ronald Cummings-John and his colleague, both of Hearmyspace were deep in conversation with Robin.

Before I could grab Stephen for a chat though, I bumped into Ben and Ed from Masabi who have tons moving, particularly in the area of mobile security. I spoke for a moment to Ben — I need to sit down with them for a little while soon and blog what they’re doing.

Tee Banwait, founder of Metracks popped in and was promptly surrounded by folk wanting to know more about his music upload and streaming service which is now mobile enabled and shortly to be enabled across all popular mobile platforms.

I should have introduced Tee to Liam Westley of Tigernews but Liam had to depart quickly. I first met Liam years ago in a shiny conference room. He was developing a moderation system for a live interactive chat service. He’s a shit hot .net developer. Sheeeet hot. I thought Liam and Tee should maybe speak about Windows Mobile and .net.

Richard Percy of Liquid Media was a ubiquitous figure across the evening — I got his card but unfortunately not his web address so I’ve nothing to link to… yet.

If you’re into bio-diverse networking, you should have a chat to Richard Lander and the team at Locustworld. I only managed to briefly say hi last night.

Anthony D’Alton of Parys Communications joined Giles Adams, Marketing Director of Texperts to arrive at the same time. Only a week had passed since we were all sat in a funky Golf driving round London at 4am in the morning for the Texperts launch. I pointed them straight to the bar as I caught up with Oleg Podsechin of ION Square (“power on start-up”) together with the Pitch chaps.

I managed to get the card of their java developer, Andrew McMillan whilst I explained that I really, really liked how they’d implemented the service on wap/mobile web. I’m going to try and have lunch with Pitch’s Mark Tunnicliffe next week to find out more about what they’re up to.

Now, if I’ve missed you out, it’s because you didn’t give me a business card so please shoot me an email so I can get you up.

Once again, thank you to everyone who took the time to come along. It was most appreciated and I’d love to do it again soon — and maybe try and get a bit more time to speak to everyone individually.

And now for a few pictures: