Despite not coming up with a snappy opener till about 1 minute before my talk and the good-natured heckling from Tim, Chris, Jaz and Grace, I think things went pretty well last night.

When talking about blogging, PR and PR blogging, I never know how much people know or don’t know.  Such is the challenge of a public speaker.  The spectrum of experience was all over the place, and it’s very hard  to accommodate that.  That was my biggest worry. One lady (whose name escapes me at the moment), for example, came up to me after my “speech” and told she just got into blogging and wasn’t really sure what she was doing.  She asked about Twitter and communities and PR, which just reminded me how much the UK blogging scene is still growing.

Even though a lot of it was a nerveracking blur, I managed to scribble down in my head a couple of of takeaway points from last night.

  1. Community.  Yep. I talked about it alot, probably to the point of being a broken record, but it’s true.  The fact that so many people who write about so many topics, whether they’re just starting out or old pros, is really special.  I liked blogging in the States, but I love it here.  I can take those conversations offline, which only helps to reinforce the online ones.  Funny how it works like that.  You still can’t beat face-to-face communication.
  2. Overdone topic number 2: Twitter.  About 70-80% of people raised their hands when I asked how many were on Twitter.  It really is huge here, and I know a lot of the relationships I’ve made were either forged or developed on Twitter much more than my blog.
  3. Monetisation.  When we talked about this, I had the image of my ‘Monetize!’ Moo sticker from Twestival stuck in my head.  Monetisation of blogs here I don’t see as often.  I remember getting e-mail after e-mail at MS&L from bloggers wondering how they can make a lot of money blogging a la Dooce, who was able to quit her job and support her family based on advertising revenue from her blog – something 6 figures.  I hadn’t the heart to tell them that they’ll probably make $3 a month on Adsense if they’re just starting out.  It’s hard – and if you go in with the intentions of making money, you probably won’t do very well.  I owe my job to the relationships I made through blogging and social media, which – to me – is far more valuable.
  4. The future.  I’ll be honest, I hate this question.  There’s no surefire way to know.  I couldn’t predict that Twitter would take off as well as it did, I thought that Facebook Fan Pages were ‘the next big thing.’  The only thing I do know is that it’s going to expand – and more rapidly than in the US.  This means more PR pitches, more blogs and more events. What I hope is that PR people and bloggers learn from the ground work that’s been laid by the US, both good and bad.

It was a great experience, but now I’m just nervous to see what people say.  The only thing that didn’t occur to me was the feedback after.  That, and the video from Bitch Buzz.  Had I known that, I would of dressed up a little more.

Thanks to Andy and everyone that made it happen!