Le Web

Paris is an amazing place for a web conference. People from all over the world gathered together in this beautiful city to network and attend some really interesting workshops. There were a lot of top industry people speaking at the event, but none of that compares to the appearance of Her Royal Highness, Queen Rania of Jordan – who’s on Twitter! Queen Rania spoke about changing the world with online media, it was an inspiring speech, which I’m sure is on YouTube somewhere.

hanukkahLDN

So the idea was simple, let’s host a party for the winter holidays and raise some money for charity. We acquire the splendid G Casino in Piccadilly Circus, MoonBingo sponsored the bar, and we gambled, drank and had an amazing night of fun and stories. We raised money through Poker & BlackJack, which went to support JHAfrica.

XmasCrunch

Another fantastic 2pears event. XmasCrunch ended the year with startup pitches, presentations and drinking games. There was the now traditional 3 minute pitch, followed by a very odd one minute pitch. I’m all for short pitches, but I feel the one minute pitch barely gave presenters enough time to say the company name and tagline – stick to the three minutes I say. Speakers and Pitches video content is available on TC.

After all the official business was over, the 2Pears/TC party got under way. We had the TC Air Guitar Competition, Raffle prizes, lots of free booze and the traditional ‘run around with Mike Butcher around on our shoulders’ to congratulate him on another good event/year and say thanks. All the video proof is here. Really, really fun event in a great choice of venue; Gilgamesh (Covent Garden) offers something a bit different. The event ended in the AM, which was followed by a pub crawl around Covent Garden.

Great end to the year. May 2010 bring many more.

We proudly present hanukkahLDN 2009. Join us from 7pm ’till Midnight at G Casino, Piccadilly Circus on Monday 14th December to celebrate the festival of light.

From 7-9 PM we will be hosting a charity Poker Tournament. To enter the tournament you’ll need at least 1,250 chips. The top two finishers with the most chips will win a prize. (There will be re-buys available, through Twitter.)

Concurrently, we will be running Blackjack and Roulette tables using hanukkahLDN chips.

All chips won during the gambling portion will be considered legal tender for partaking in our Auction.

The Charity:

Jewish Hearts for Africa is a New York based charity [501(3)c] that purchases Solar, Water and Clean technologies from cutting-edge Israeli companies and donates them to African villages that do not have any electricity or running water.

Their projects include providing electricity for clinics, which enable the clinics to provide vaccinations and medical care, as they are actually able to refrigerate the medications. JHAfrica also installs solar-powered pumps to drill for clean water located beneath the ground.

hanukkahLDN has decided to raise money to bring electricity to schools and orphanages, so we can truly make this a Festival of Lights for everyone.

We have opened the possibility to sponsor.

Well I got my invitation today, so I’ve had a little time to test out the site.

In the invitation was a link to this really cool little youtube video, basically explaining Popula;

Yup, it’s another Calendar. But it’s not just a calender, it’s far more social than that.
To me it feels like 30boxes, eventbrite rolled into one.

You pick a genre (music/business for e.g.) and then it will list events in your area, in the near future.
I found a Barcamp, marked my attendance, and it takes me to a very ‘facebook events’-ish page, giving me more info, a google map, address, and a list of all the other attendees.
Clicking on another attendee will show you what other events they are planning on attending.

It’s a very simple design. On first load, the right-hand advert banned caught my attention before the main page – and I’m usually add-bling. So maybe they could do with a little colour?

The functionality of the site is great. If they release an English version, I can see this being very useful in London, to see when the latest web2.0 meetups are happening, and who’s going. But I’m sure there’ll be far more uses. The inde music scene will love this, especially.

So if you have a niche social group, and want to keep upto date with all the latest events, Popula is a pretty good site.
Of course if you wanna just stay home with the cat, you’re probably not going to want to sign up to this one!