Trip to the big tent (or ‘What I did on my holidays’)

As previously advertised, on Friday I made my way down to The O2 to have a nose about.  I was there to check out the filming of a new advert highlighting all the goodly things available at the venue (priority ticket booking, access to private areas, etc) if you’re on the O2 network.

I gather that my involvement was part of a proof of concept – seeing what it was like to have bloggers involved in documenting what goes on behind the scenes.  Essentially I’d been brought along to blog, tweet, photo and video lots and was given pretty much unfettered access to do so.  There are worse ways to spend a Friday.

Anyway, I met up with @benrmatthews (who was doing remarkably well considering he’d been hosting 200 or so Twitterers at the inaugral Twestival the night before) and @drewb and we were ushered into a strange world of horses, wrestlers, bands, dancers and all sorts of other weird and wonderful things.

There’s no point me describing what went on because I was documenting things as I went along.  So, for a flavour of the day here are my tweets (to be read from the bottom up):

Here are my photos (there are more from Ben and Drew – we tagged everything o2bloggers):

And here are a couple of videos I streamed (and recorded) live using Bambuser, a nice little service that I’d all but forgotten about.  Please bear in mind that these couldn’t have been any more spur of the moment so there’s no incisive questioning or anything.  The first is with Ed from O2 who explained what the ad is for:

The second is with JP, O2’s Digital Communications Manager – the guy who monitors the internet and responds to O2-related problems, queries, etc that people might have:

Some other stuff from the day, bulletpoint-style:

• We got a tour of the building from the events manager which was pretty sweet – they don’t usually do tours.
• Drew, Ben and I were initially the subject of 5 mins of curiosity.  Sample question – “Blogging… why?” Actually that was as deep as the conversation went.
• Actually, saying that, one of the stylists was talking about getting some sort of website together so I spent a couple of minutes setting up a blog here – Lucy Harvey.  I showed her what some companies around Birmingham are using blogs for which impressed her so I’m hoping she makes some use of it.
• The editor was Joe Guest.  I wish I’d chatted with him more because he worked on the Cadbury’s Gorilla ad as well as music videos for U2, The Streets, Kasabian and Dirty Vegas.  He looked kinda busy though.
• I got the distinct impression that if this wrestler didn’t want me to exist it wouldn’t take him much to snuff me out.  Dude was huge.
• The O2’s (v swish) VIP bar is going to be the venue for a hack day sometime in October.  More info on that to come.

Anyway, it was a good day.  I got to poke around the venue and saw some things you certainly don’t see every day.  It was fun to really put Bambuser, Flickr and Twitter to work for a few solid hours, even if the best lesson I learnt was about how quickly an iPhone’s battery can be used up.

I also enjoyed meeting the guys from Hotwire and am hoping to keep in touch, especially as some of Ben’s side-projects (the Twestival meet-up and Bright One, a PR company for charities and such) might maybe have some overlap with some of my own.

Blogging for the man

A couple of interesting things have been flung my way in recent days.  First up there was the invitation to the mobile phone-sponsored secret gig that I went to (and indeed blogged about) a couple of weeks back.  Now I’ve been invited to the Tory Party Conference and the filming of an advert for the O2 Arena.

The Tory Conference

This is a funny one.  PR Week’s main story is about Labour & Tory plans to ‘dominate the blogosphere’:

it emerges the Conservative Party is trialling a local blogger charm offensive at its annual conference in Birmingham next week.

Head of new media Rishi Saha has worked with regional organisation Screen West Midlands to identify ten influential bloggers in the area, who have been given free VIP passes to the conference.

Caroline Spelman, Conservative Party chairman, told PRWeek: ‘As a West Midlands MP I am delighted to be engaging with leading voices in Birmingham’s new media.’

Which, slightly hilariously, makes me an influential blogger (thanks CiB) although I can’t remember ever mentioning politics in a post and there have been a lot since I took over in May.  Mark Hanson at the PR Media Blog has picked up on this and suggests that:

What’s fascinating here is that they have chosen non-political blogs to take part in this. The guests are blogging in the arts, culture and entertainment spheres. The aim is to build a groundswell of support amongst general opinion formers who may be persuaded to engage and debate Tory policies as opposed to rabidly backing or attacking.

Interesting.  I particularly like this:

The danger is that the bemused bloggers are hurded into a backroom in Birmingham for tea and buscuits, have an awkward Q&A with a bemused shadow cabinet member and then having ticked a box forget all about it

Anyway, we’ll see how that one pans out.

The O2 Arena

The invite to the O2 Arena was a surprising one.  I guess I might have popped up on their radar when I covered the Unlit thing the other week.  All I know about that one is that there’ll be some unsigned bands and some ’spectacular acts’ to give a flavour of the sort of thing that happens at the big tent in Greenwich.  I’m allowed to Tweet, take photos and blog whatever I like so expect some of that in the next day or so.

Incidentally, my initial wariness over the approach from the PR guy was tempered by the person in question being Ben Matthews, one of the organisers of tonight’s Twestival (an event what has got me thinking interesting thoughts).