Make up your mind!
Big thanks to Fullrun for arranging the brilliant Flackenhacks awards last night. Held at the cool Village Underground, a short stroll from Liverpool Street, my colleague Lyndon and I enjoyed a superb night boozing and schmoozing with fellow PROs and technology journalists.
While signing in it became apparent that the organisers hadn’t received our message that my colleague Jo Jamieson had been replaced by yours truely from Berkeley PR so I spent the night with a schizophrenic name badge on (see above). It actually proved to be quite a good ice breaker when talking to people as a number of people referred to me as the man with no name or simply asked which one was I going to be today?
Anyway, the scene for the evening was set when, while waiting to get rid of my coat I heard Becky McMichael asking where the bar was and a couple of hacks warmly welcoming John Leydon with a shout of “John you old ****** great to see you”. We quickly settled at the free bar (who would have predicted that one) and marvelled at the three huge dishes of paella being prepared in the room and ice cream van. Amasingly, considering some of the conversations I had with drunken PROs, the Flackenhacks blog has this morning reported that everyone drank less this year than last. I feel suitably ashamed.
Looking around it was cool to see so many faces that I recognised from the blogosphere and journos that I had met with clients. I was also pleased to see that not all of the journalists were content to stand in a corner cowering from the fearsome PR monsters before them but actually worked the room and made a genuine effort to speak to everyone. Special mention has to go to Mark Dye who at the blink of an eye always seemed to be chatting to a different person. Cool guy.
The awards were suitably silly with more than a few cheers going around the room for specific nominations. Ones to note have to be Jessica Twentyman deservedly winning the freelance tech hack of the year, Richard Bailey, lecturer, Leeds Metropolitan University (PR Studies) winning the “Wank 2.0: User-generated twat of the year” category and Gary Flood winning the rudest hack gong. Also a hearty congrats to the Wadds and Steve at Rainier who picked up the PR agency of the year award and to Mathew for admiting that putting together his top PR blogs list is as big a head ache as I thought it was.
Finally, I mentioned in the blog yesterday one of the fundraising ideas was to offer people the opportunity to bid on their favourite journo via ebay. Bumping into Eric Doyle as I was on my way out he proudly told me that he was third overall but the number one freelancer with £50. Anyway, the table according to the official blog stood like this:
– Martin Veitch: £200
– Phil Muncaster: £86.00
– Gordon Kelly: £86.00 (ongoing)
– Eric Doyle: £50.00
– David Meyer: £36.00
– Mark Dye: £36.00
– Bryan Glick: £30.99
– Mark Samuels: £26.00
– Rob Kerr: £26.00
– Jeremy Kirk: £26.00
– Mike Dempsey: £19.99
– Rupert Goodwins: £19.99
– Andy McCue: £19.99
– Tim Phillips: £19.99 (ongoing)
All in all a great night out and cool to meet up with so many from the industry.
