Bloggers in London and Twitterers in West Hampstead

When I move to a new city I try to find local bloggers – and this time round people on Twitter – as a way to explore my new hometown.

In Copenhagen I joined a bloggers dinner and learned about BarCamp through bloggers and in Prague I made a couple of Danish friends that I found through their blogs. I also met Empty Nested Karen and Minnesotan Al in Prague.

I’m trying to do the same in London but in London everything is so much bigger which is both good and bad. Good because you can find literally everything and all sorts of people, groups and activities. Bad because it easily becomes overwhelming and places and people are far apart. Nevertheless I’ve embarked on the London blogosphere and twittersphere.

Ann and I went to the Christmas gathering of a group called London Bloggers Meetup (#LBM) that organizes a monthly event for people who blog to meetup and chat.

London Blogger Meetup 003

The group was started two years ago by Andy and has gone from having a handful participants to having upwards of 100 now with the events getting booked out days or weeks before they take place. Here Andy is presenting one of the nights three speakers.

London Blogger Meetup Presentation

First speaker was a security expert from Symantec (who sponsored the bar tab), then followed one of the girls of Domestic Sluttery (they brought cookies!) talked about tips for bloggers and last was Arvind talking about Kiva – a microfinance project.

A great night and I got round to speak to a couple of bloggers like Jorgen, The Undercover Recruiter and Too Geeky Chris (and a couple I forgot, ups).

A few weeks later I went to West Hampstead a neighborhood 30 min walk away from here. There is an active and growing online community in West Hampstead that mainly engage on Twitter. Jonathan is the man behind the blog West Hampstead Life and he is also very active on Twitter where he has been the anchorman for a lot of events. I went to a meetup called a #WHampGather at Alice House a very cool pub/restaurant.

The Alice House

There were loads of people who turned up for the event, our corner was completely packed and the group was very divers. Again I met a lot of interesting people and had a good evening.

Crowded backroom at the #WHampGather

At both events there were prizes and gifts so from the bloggers meetup I came away with a copy of Symantics new anti virus program and the day after I won a lampshade and from the twitter event I won a cool Dot To Date calendar.

Danish bloggers in Prague

Rasmus from the Danish BlogMagasinet asked in one of the recent podcasts, how we use blogs to meet people. So I figured I’d tell about how I’ve used it here in Prague.

Before I moved down here I search on google.com, technorati.com, blogbot.dk or overskrift.dk for people blogging about Prague in either Danish or English and I found two Danes.

Jazz at U Maleho Glena

The first one is Laus Sørensen. Laus runs the vacation agency Prag Eksperten and has made a business from renting apartments and giving tours to Danes. He is blogging at prag.urbanblog.dk were he writes about the city, his business and his friends. As a newcomer in town there is definitely some good information about the city and his company site has the most comprehensive site about Prague in Danish.
A couple of weeks ago I went to dinner with Laus at U Maleho Glena (picture above) a very cool jazz spot in Prague. We talked about the city, running businesses and realized that we both have parents in Jylland so maybe we can carpool to Denmark sometime.

The second Dane is Holme but he is actually not in town yet. He is going to stay in Prague for a year with his Czech girl friend while studying. I think he is moving down here sometime in August so I’ll try and see if I can catch him over a pivo sometime.

In my daily life I only speak English – apart from when I’m calling home – so it’s nice that there is a few Danes in town.

There is of course also a number of English blogs about life in Prague. The ones that I am keeping a tap on these days are:

[Update 18/9 ’07] Just came across another Dane in Prague called Pavel-Helge – he has a lot of updated info in Danish about what’s going on in Prague.

[Update 14/1 ’08] Just came across another Danish blog about Prague called Prag HotSpots by Jens Gregersen.