Last night was the 27 Dinner, and I thoroughly enjoyed it (we did actually have dinner, even though these photos were taken during the talk afterwards).  First up was a talk by Paul Slade about social CRM, and then there was a panel discussion about “pseulebrity” which is a word coined by Mike Sharman to describe those of you who are well known and influential on Twitter, but not because you are a celeb in the ‘real world’.

I really really liked the format of the panel discussion, and the panel consisted of Mike Sharman, Khaya Dlanga, Craig Rodney, Paul Slade and Melissa Attree and was facilitated by Mike Stopforth.  After Mike Sharman’s long intro where he explained in depth about how he got to use a Mini Countryman as a result of blogging and tweeting, the discussion got going   It was great to hear a lot of my views being shared by others about how to engage people on Twitter and other platforms

I’ve put these images and more in an album on my Facebook page, so if you were there, you can tag yourselves

It was the last 27 Dinner to be held in 2010 (even though today was the 24th!), and Metro in Benmore Centre was the venue.  As usual, it was packed with geeks and tonight the food was sponsored by Seacom… and that was awesome btw!

I must also say that I played around with the low ISO on my new 5D, and it’s gorgeous – no need for flash for the wide angle photos… and CraigN lent me his 16-35mm lens for a bit and now I have something new to add to my Xmas wish list!

This shot was taken with my 24-70mm, and the next 2 wide angle shots taken with the 16-35mm

Jessica and Sezleigh listening to Meea talking about her 4 kids

Craig and Nick Jackson

I finally got to meet Jackie!

The one and only Mike Stopforth, who once again did a fabulous job organising the event!

Stafford Masie spoke about his new venture, Way Tag and the changes that are coming in the next few months

Then, Deep Fried Man had us all in stitches with his Social Media songs… especially the Twitter song… hopefully someone recorded it and we’ll be able to find it on Youtube

And because @hotsquid gave me so much grief on Twitter about having no energy to go to 27 Dinner, he gets his mug on my blog too!

I’ve also put a few more in a Facebook album on my page so everyone that was there can tag themselves

The 27 Dinner was held at the Rocket Restaurant in Rivonia this evening, and it rocked! The venue rocked, the food and drinks (sponsored by FNB) rocked, the speakers rocked and the crowd was great tonight.  For some reason, I got to speak to more people tonight than I have done in the last few 27 Dinners.  I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

The twitterfall in action with the #27dinner hashtag

Not sure what Brett Haggard was up to here

And what’s a geek gettogether without a macbook?  Not sure what Walter Pike, Paul Bedford and Kerry Haggard were doing

Chris Savides from FNB spoke about Paypal’s new developer competition and how FNB will sponsor one SA development company a trip to San Francisco; and some of their plans to extend the Paypal offering to Rands and he spoke about transaction kickbacks for eCommerce developers when integrating their client applications. It’s a real pity he couldn’t talk about how many users there are in South Africa however, and how much growth there is… the only thing he would say was that the numbers are bigger than we all think.

Philly_girl tweeting again and Saulk

eBucks CEO Yolande

Jessica got very excited with all the food, but was seriously only interested in the desserts

Then Achal Prabhala, who is based in Bangalore, India; and works on the advisory board of the Wikimedia foundation spoke about Wikipedia and how they are trying to grow it in South Africa. This sparked quite a few comments about how people had tried to edit some articles etc and the problems they’ve experienced… and basically he just said that you just need to try again because the process has changed and is more robust.

Melody Maker tweeting

… and Elan tweeting too…

Lastly, Rabin Harduth did a little stand up comedy before the most amazing brownies arrived…. ooh… and the most decadent hot chocolate too!

EveD enjoyed the joke

Some networking… what the 27 dinner is all about

Poor Craig‘s car broke down on the way there, but he was determined… and got there a few minutes before I had to leave

Samuraibunny and Telana

It was an awesome evening… thanks very much to Cerebra for organising it!

The 27 Dinner was held at the vitaminwater Pop Up Store in Parkhurst tonight.   There was plenty of vitaminwater on tap, and some mixed in vodka based punches too! It was a short evening tonight, as most people wanted to watch the soccer between Brazil and Chile which was being shown in the one room in this gorgeous venue.

The main speaker at the event was Gareth Knight, who is the organiser of the upcoming Tech4Africa event.  Cannot wait… I have tickets to that!

Someone from the organisation United Against Malaria also spoke about what the organisation does, and then she also sold the bracelets to everyone… very cool little beaded affairs that can be bought online.

Watching the soccer…

There are more photos on a 27 Dinner Flickr set, and see the full set of 2010 photo-a-day photos on my Project 365 Flickr Set.

The 27 Dinner this month was held at the Metro Bistro in Benmore… with the most awesome food… and a cosmopolitan as you walked in the door (much to Don Packett’s dismay as he wasn’t very pleased to have been drinking that unmanly drink when I took his photo LOL!!).  The speakers tonight included Eve D who spoke about the Crowd Fund and Geek Space; Mark Stacey; Vinny Lingham who spoke about running a successful online business based on his Yola experiences… and a quick 30 second talk by Eran Eyal who spoke about a new venture that’s launching in September around building crowdsourcing sites.

It was a good evening in all, and I met new people, and learnt a few things… which is always worthwhile in my books

I wasn’t the only one with a camera tonight… and I was drooling over Paul Bedford’s 1D

Don, I made the colours more manly to compensate for the girly drink

Mark Stacey and Vinny Lingham
@eved talking about crowdfunding

The beautiful Melody, from Cerebra who puts so much effort into making this function a success!

I finally got to meet @africanabc aka Graham in real life!

Vinny talking about Yola

There is always a lot of networking going on via Twitter during the evening… as Philly_girl is illustrating

And finally, Eran Eyal from Springleap fame (yes, those cool t-shirts) talking about his new venture

And there are more photos on my Flickr Set… just look at the end of the set for tonight’s photos

It was an awesome evening… I’ll be at the next one for sure