Bigup to the bloggers, geeks and media people that made it to the first ever Bloggerati Cape Town at the Long Street Cafe. The idea was to have a casual meet up over drinks (name tags were banned) and it turned out to be a rather cracking evening. In fact it was testament to blogger power that there was such a good turnout. It was good to have the first one in Cape Town — every geek gathering I’ve been to there has produced a good turn out. I’m starting to think it’s the place to be.
It was a crazymad trip. Vincent and I were in town for only one evening and two half days. We had quite a few meetings, including Paddy Browning, MD of IOL and JP Farinha, Chief Exec of 24.com. We also presented a session on blogging and social networking at a small internet networking session organised by the MD of bidorbuy, Andy Higgins — which included key people from privateproperty.co.za, Jump.co.za (Albert Bredenhann), safarinow.com (Matthew Swart), Myadsl.co.za (Rudolph Muller) and a few others. Andy also kindly treated everyone to a power-supper on the spectacular top floor of the rather pleasant Arrabella Quays… which was the real reason we were a bit late for Bloggerati. In fact this apparently sparked rumours that Bloggerati could all be a hoax, but a hoax it was not.
There was a good turnout of around 50-60 people at Bloggerati. Mr and Ms Podcast was there, Tony Lankester and Jayne Morgan. Also great to link up again with the always-cheerful Vinny Lingham, the gelled Dave Duarte, one and only Max Kaizen and the cool Chris Rawlinson who was dishing out Stormhoek wine, which I never got to taste this time. Was also nice to see News24’s Elan Lohmann (now head of social networking at 24.com) and Derek Abdinor (nice surprise). Also finally met up with the talented Charl Norman, Foxxini, Yasser Buchana, Henk from Skyrove, Rowan and Tristen from MyVideo, Jason Bagley and of course Bolton Deventer, who was knocking them back. Also was introduced to Heather Luckoff and two of our Thought Leader bloggers Beverly Merriman and Jonty Fisher, whose insights are well known. Was also happy to see Jonathan Hitchcock pull through after the Geek dinner. (Sorry about the geek clash). Also always nice to hook up with Gerrit Giliomee, although it was too brief.
I see that the ubiquitous Bizcommunity covered the event and took some photos. Brandon Golding also took some excellent photos, posted on Facebook.
It was a whirlwind evening and I’m sorry we never got to meet everyone… hopefully next time. Based on the success of this event, we’re going to hold another one in Joburg soon. Maybe there will be more than three days notice this time 
.
Some posts & pics about Bloggerati:
imod
Roxilla
Jason Bagley
Vincent Maher
Green Man
More photos here and here and on Facebook, here
Another post! Popular event indeed!
Was an awesome evening. Thanks for an interesting chat and for organising everything. It’s Tristan with an ‘a’ btw
marvellous Matt, so damn fine seeing you Jozi.boys in our ‘burb again, hope to see a lot more of you guys this year. Sounds like there are some foundational shifts coming in the power structures of media incoming.
May you stay out of the suing swathe of JZ for as long as possible >>
[...] Gathering of the Bloggerati Bookmark this post: Published by Charl Norman February 4th, 2008 in Bloggerati, Links. [...]
Yeah popular event indeed. The Photos are pretty cool. Looking forward to the next event.
[...] The Amatomu bloggerati party that all Cape Town bloggers were invited to went down last night at the Long Street Cafe. Long Street was buzzing with Phuza Thursday fever and so was Long Street Cafe. So at first it was difficult to tell who our fellow bloggers were, we soon however indentified a likely looking group of people hanging out by the bar and managed to snap a few pics. Click here to view the pics vincentmaher.com Bloggerati link love matthewbuckland.com News [...]
Yo guys — nice to see you too..sorry about the mispellings… must try not to write in a rush… we’ll def do a joburg version… in fact we are already plotting
[...] If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed.Thanks for visiting!In case you don’t know, there’s a blogger, media and digital citizen gathering in Joburg on Saturday evening. Bloggerati Cape Town at the Long Street Cafe went down well, so we decided to do a Joburg one. It’s a relaxed get-together of geeks to network and have a good time… Stormhoek are providing some wine and there will be some catering. But also bring your own booze and snacks if you plan to go large, or you are a large person. An open fire will also be provided. If you’re in the mood and in the zone, the Facebook event is here. [...]
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