TWiSTldn Meetup Volume #2

In this real time world, posting 1.5 days after the event took place just feels a little slack, so apologies first and foremost.

Tuesday night saw the second ever TWiSTldn meetup take place in the ever increasingly trendy Camden Town. Our location, kindly provided by Camden Town Unlimited‘s “The Collective” provided a bright and spacious setting. And with their highly intuitive partitioning fixtures, it meant that we could mould the room to suit the crowd that showed up, without being too big or too small. Just Perfect.

We had four amazing companies led by some truly engaging and inspirational entrepreneurs who took to the stage and pitched to us. I tell you now, we thought that the first meetup was good, these guys raised the bar again when it came to quality, which I hope will become the hallmark of a TWiSTldn Meetup event. Pure Quality.

On the roster was Scott Allison @Teamly, Sally Broom @Tripbod, Joshua Rex @This is Open and Rhian Evans & Geoff Vaughan

@CampingNinja.

I wont go too much into the content of the pitches, as Mick is busy pulling together the videos of the event and I don’t want to spoil them by trying to explain – I’ll let you see for yourself.

Scott gave us an insight into the challenge of everyday businesses to track, monitor and manage the everyday tasks our staff have to get done in a way that is visible and open. Teamly is an application for those “normal” businesses, rather than the existing applications which are more relevant to technology related businesses and project management processes. Teamly could be the application of choice of office managers everywhere.

Sally introduced her network of “friends at the other end” and how this amazing resource of well vetted and quality controlled hyper local advisers can help you to plan your next trip. Tripbod makes the most of local knowledge to find those hidden gems the everyday travel companies just don’t know about. The Tripbod service is sure to make organising your holiday just as much fun as actually going on it!

Joshua showed us some examples of how they are transforming the online ad space with their IMU products – a way of using rich multi-media to reinvigorate the stale and often overlooked banner ad. This is Open have been on a rich vein of form with their bespoke services, showcasing clients such as P&G, Vodaphone/McLaren, Seaworld among others. This is Open are now looking to push on with their platform based business model, we’ll hear more about that for sure.

Last, but by no means least, Geoff and Rhian explained how CampingNinja was enabling

something that, in this day and age, you’d be forgiven for thinking “why can’t I already book a campsite online?” – after all, you can book cottages, hotels, hostels, chalets, why not campsites? Well that’s all about to change and not without some serious hard work on the part of the CampingNinja crew who have the enviable task convincing campsite owners to sign up and join the revolution whilst marketing to us campers at the same time. Phew! Lucky these guys aren’t afraid to get stuck in, evidenced by the days earlier guerilla style marketing activities they were performing around London.

Thanks again to Camden Town Unlimited, Dimitar and the guys from OVIA, Mick the Camera and everyone who made the effort to attend and support the This Week in Startups London entrepreneur scene.

So, the event was a resounding success for sure. After all, it’s free to attend, we provided beer and soft drinks, great companies and perfect location. We can’t wait for the next event scheduled for the 22nd September 2010 – put it in the diary! Next event will be a global meetup, so you better bring your A-game and quick, because the pitch list is filling up fast!