Posts Tagged ‘Social Media Cafe’

The Londonist Eye, Social Media Mafia and Your Weekly Reading

Londonist EyeWell, it’s been a busy week to say the least. I started an internship at Hachette Filipacci, wrote a new Entrepreneur.com article (you’ll see it soon) and still managed to write Londonist posts four out of five days.

I also managed to make it to the Museum of London for a pub quiz last night with the Londonist crew. I was pretty useless at answering questions since they were all about London (I think I knew 2), but I did excel in the arts and crafts bonus round, helping create an interactive, turning version of the London Eye, which we’d like to fondly call the Londonist Eye, out of paper straws and pipe cleaners. (In the photo, it’s nearly finished). Lindsey wrote a good post about it this morning, which really describes the evening well.

Today I went to Social Media Cafe at the Coach and Horses to catch up with my Friday morning friends, and went to lunch with the much more daunting sounding Social Media Mafia, which is actually a lovely group of people. We had curry on Brick Lane — my first time there — which ended up being a long and leisurely lunchtime feast. I’m still recovering.

The weekly reading list:

Social Media Club and QR Codes

francinekizner.com qr codeToday I got myself out of the house for almost the entire day by going to the Social Media Club/Tuttle Club. Now a weekly event every Friday starting at 10 a.m. at Norman’s Coach and Horses on Greek Street in Soho, the group is a lively confluence of professional marketers, bloggers, developers and social media types.

Though I tend to be nervous walking into a room of strangers — or almost all strangers, since I did know a couple of people — I felt welcomed immediately and sat down to have a cup of tea and a croissant with some newfound friends. It was nice to chat about writing, blogging, marketing and to hear about people’s startups. And I ended up staying for the QR code lunch as well.

I only learned about QR codes a few weeks ago — they’re not really used in the U.S. yet — so I felt like I should learn a bit more. Basically, they’re square-shaped bar codes that sort of look like TV fuzz that can encode urls, text information, v-cards (virtual business cards) and more. These codes are then used as shortcuts for mobile phones — the user takes a photo scan of the code and it displays the encoded information or takes them to a specific website.

The QR pros today were from i-nigma and Squiggly Square, and they had some interesting uses of the tech to talk about — both ones that had been done and some theoretical applications. Basically, it gave me a good deal to think about, and I learned some new things.

And, of course, I had to create code that’ll get you to my portfolio site (above). If anyone checking this out has a bar code reader on their phone, let me know if it works.