You can see Tamsin Hatton's photos of the latest London meeting on Flickr our Facebook group, as well as her summary post here.  It  was great fun talking creativity with the group.  Lloyd Davis told me he had an empty diary, and was wondering what to do with the day when he saw my tweet (that's a twitter message for the uninitiated - see later) saying I was on the way to the Heights that morning.  He decided to come along, which highlights how useful twitter can be. 

Lloyd's London Social Media Cafe is really taking off, and he was asking me why I turn up there every week - simple answer - a mix of really interesting people, and good connections.  Alex Craxton, who runs Mobile Mondays, turned up to CCC again, and of course I facilitate London Wiki Wednesdays.  That triggered Toby Moores to start talking about the idea of a Network of Networks.  Maybe we can organize some joint events and get the 4 or more groups connected.  A discussion ensued about the power of connecting nodes - with Metcalfe's law suggesting the value of the network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system, and Reed's law suggesting that the utility of large networks, particularly social networks, can scale exponentially with the size of the network.  I think we agreed with the principles, but we're not really sure that the maths works - but we do know a network of networks has got to be a good thing. 

Professor Patrick Smith of Buckinghamshire New University came along, and he started to talk about helping with a thinking skills module Toby has to put together for DMU.  Patrick got intrigued by the group talking about twitter, so I pulled him aside for a little tutorial on it, and things like twhirl.  Patrick is trying to get in to these sorts of social media tools to see how useful thy are, and so he can get on the same wavelength as some of his students.  I'll be chasing him up to encourage him to get a twiiter ID and join the party.

Penny Jackson  was there, with her recorder, so maybe you'll hear a podcast of some of the best bits, assuming the Heights classical lounge music doesn't intrude too much.  You can see me showing her that I can wave as fast as Flash Gordon.   We talked about social objects and word of mouth marketing. 

Earlier in the meeting Toby had been talking about something he, David Tebbutt and I were discussing two weeks ago - about how web 2.0 tools affect creativity.  It relates to the trajectory of an idea from an ill-formed thought to a fully-fledged idea.  It probably demands some fuller posts, but I'll try and explain here.  It used to be that on a particular topic we might have a conversations face to face or on the phone, and maybe a PowerPoint presentation or a report in Word document form, or maybe some email exchanges.  The report, emails and the presentation are captured, but there was no persistence to the conversations.   Helping with that persistence is where web 2.0 tools can begin to fill in the gaps.  We might use skype for instant message   and capture the exchange as a by-product.  We might use skype voice or some other VoIP, and record the conversation.  We can use blogs and wikis as part of the collaboration in developing the idea, or a variety of other project or collaboration tools.  More and more of these tools capture the conversations around the idea, and in so doing add significant value to the process, so web 2.0 can be a major facilitator to the creative process.  I'll be expanding on this in later posts.

I hope we can get more to the next London meeting in a fortnight.  I don't know if this venue is quite right for us, and we haven't yet connected properly with a local University.  We need to try that.  I certainly like the Coach & Horses in Greek Street, where Lloyd holds the Social Media Cafe - if you have any thoughts on what would make you more likely to attend, we'd love to hear from you.