Crawling Into the Void with Hugh MacLeod and Robert Scoble

I’m feeling better than I really deserve to after spending yesterday afternoon on Hugh MacLeod and Robert Scoble’s pub crawl, followed by a party in the evening (not the Firefox one, I’m not a hardcore geek yet). As well as Hugh and Robert, who were both charming, I met a bunch of very interesting guys (no ladies) involved in all kinds of web-related projects.

If you read a lot of blogs Hugh and Robert will need no introduction – if not, Hugh draws the wickedly funny cartoons on GapingVoid which he simultaneously gives away for free and uses to sell Stormhoek wine, Savile Row suits and Thingamy software. Robert blogs at Scobleizer.com and quite literally wrote the book on blogging – Naked Conversations, which he co-authored with Shel Israel, essential reading for anyone considering writing a business blog.

The afternoon was kickstarted when Hugh received a call to say the Thresher viral campaign has resulted in 800,000 downloads of the 40% off coupons and wine is quite figuratively flying off the shelves. I woke up this morning to learn that the campaign (and Hugh’s cartoons) had been featured on the BBC News and national press. If you’re one of the few people in the UK who haven’t received a voucher, you can get one here and cross your fingers that Thresher have still got some wine left.

The Apple store was on the itinerary at the beginning but seemed to fall off it after a few pints. We did get a tour of Savile Row from Hugh, recorded in HD video by Robert – doubtless some of the footage will surface on the web soon. Apart from that the afternoon was spent diligently quaffing pints of Guinness and sharing ideas and enthusiasm.

People I met included Yakov Sadchikov, President of Quintura, who is developing a visual search engine using ‘clouds’ that work a bit like a mind-map; Jeffrey Walker of Atlassian Software Systems, Bob Pinkett of Peter Brett Associates, Martin Judd of Joined-up Solutions, Darren Straight who’s studying IT at the University of Kent, and Nigel Cooke who is photoblogging everything he eats and drinks and John Wilson who did a great job of shepherding us with a mulitcoloured umbrella.

Thanks to everyone for a great afternoon – if you were there and I didn’t get your URL, send it to me and I’ll add it to this post.