Friday morning’s Social Media Cafe get-together in London was another excellent event but with a difference – the venue.

After spending all of this year at the Coach and Horses pub in Soho, SMC has moved its regular Friday mornings to the Institute of Contemporary Arts in The Mall (quite a swanky location, actually in the ICA Bar and Cafe).

The move marks something that SMC founder Lloyd Davis regards as Phase 2, as does SMC regular Mike Atherton who calls it an evolution.

I agree with both of them, in that changes/development/evolution in SMC will be the result of what people do with the right framework. That framework is what Lloyd, Mike (and others) have been enabling.

Lloyd talks more about Phase 2 in this Qik video I made on Friday.

You can hear Lloyd very clearly but not my questions too well – we used Lloyd’s clip-on microphone plugged in to the headset jack on my Nokia N95 8GB: a nice hack that produces great audio when you’re recording video but at the expense of cutting out the internal microphone.

Anyway, a key point Lloyd makes is that a big appeal of the SMC for many people is simply the other people they encounter on Friday mornings: the regular crew as well as new faces each time.

There’s little structure – you’re not expected to do anything or listen to a presentation or anything like that – just show up, hang out, do whatever you want.

That’s the biggest appeal for me – meeting people and no agenda, so to speak. I hope it stays that way as I think a regular event like this one that ‘behaves’ like that is pretty unique and, therefore, quite special.

Here’s two examples – shooting the breeze with Luke Razzell plus Dennis Howlett on the economy.

Impromptu, informal and special. Long may it continue.

If you haven’t been to the SMC, why not come along this Friday?