Last week during the Melcrum communications conference in London, Debbie Weil and I organized a get-together with some bloggers which took place in a pub on Wednesday evening.

Those who came and became part of a great evening were Matt O’Neill, Tom Shelley, Mark White, Alex Manchester, Keith Collins and Martyn Davies. Plus Debbie and me, making a core group of eight.

We had a tremendous time as we all have a common and passionate interest in, and lots of opinions about, social media, PR, politics… you name it, we discussed it. One topic that produced lively discussion was the Edelman/Wal-Mart fake blog fiasco. Lots of different opinions.

Towards the end of our get-together, each of us recorded some thoughts for posterity which you can listen to here. It doesn’t include our Edelman chat – I wish we’d recorded that! Matt couldn’t stay for dinner so he’s not in the recording. Martyn had to leave as we were starting so I grabbed a commentary from him that’s spliced into the end of the audio file.

The venue – the Hereford Arms, Gloucester Road – was great, so Victoria, thanks for the nice recommendation!

Everyone, it really was great and we must do it again soon. And those of you who would have liked to join in but couldn’t make it, maybe next time.

(On a technical note: I recorded the conversations with my iRiver IFP-790 then lightly edited the files – mostly normalizing – in Adobe Audition. I would have used my Microtrack 24/96 to record but it broke last month and it’s still with the UK repairer. They’ve had it for nearly a month now, which reminds me that I’ve not heard a word from them…)