Swanification.com

Time has gone so quickly since my last update. An *amazing* number of things have happened, I don’t know where to start!

Ok, so I’ll start from the first bit of goodness. As many of you know, I wasn’t overly happy at my admin job at the Bank. The people were great, but the work was not very challenging and in the current financial climate the morale was very low amongst the team. For years I have been helping out various web/ tech companies with the communities and also blogging for various people. Everyone knows I am a Twitaholic and addicted to the net in general! For years, my dream job has been to become a Community Manager and build a community (ideally from scratch) and get more involved with social media. Well, with the support of my lovely Bob and various other friends (especially Sarah Blow), I decided to go for it. I went for a couple of interviews and was offered both roles. I decided on the role at an international publishers, working as a Community Manager for estatesgazette.com. I am delighted with my choice and over the past 3 weeks, I have been working with some amazingly motivated and knowledgeable people. I have already learnt a great deal and I have so many ideas, but we won’t go into that now

My second bit of news and by far the biggest and most exciting is… The wonderful boy I met just 8 or so months ago, the love of my life, the most honest and perfect man to walk the earth (in my opinion), proposed to me on the 20th November after the Cozy TweetUp and I said yes (over and over and over again!). So… I’M GETTING MARRIED!!! I just can’t believe it! If you have read any of my previous blogs, you will know this is a great deal for me. I was in a relationship for over 5 years with no commitment and little love (in the end). For years I wanted to find someone who loved me for who I am and not what they could turn me into. I also wanted to find someone whom I could trust impeccably, who would love and care for me as much as I did them. Until a rainy day back in March, I hadn’t found this person. Now I have him and his wonderful family, who I very much consider my own. I will have 2 lovely sister in laws, a very cute nephew and in laws that I love dearly! Not to mention, his son who is just awesome in every way!

My final piece of news is that my website www.girlsngadgets.com won an award at the IT Blogs 09 run by Computer Weekly! You can see pics and a run down of the evening here.

In the space of 9 months, I’ve met the love of my life and future husband, I’ve got my dream job and won an award for my website! I couldn’t be happier.

Well, it’s finally happened! I have the interwebz once again! Yes… It’s taken a little while but I got there I have been totally lost without it at home. If it wasn’t for my Blackberry, I don’t know what I would have done! I do feel like I have lost touch a little, but I am sure it won’t take long to get back into the swing of things.

I’ll be spending a lot of time over the next few weeks working on Girls ‘n’ Gadgets as I am hoping to do a proper launch soon. With moving house and the lack of broadband at the new place, it has been impossible to keep up with. However, it’s given me a lot of thinking time and I have a lot of ideas I would like to action. I have just had my business cards designed and printed and the next step is to redesign the site. I’ve been networking as much as possible until now, but I think it’s time that full concentration on the site begins now. I have cancelled a lot of events in September already in order to do this, but one event I can’t miss is Twestival.

Twestival was so good last time! Despite the fact it’s 3 times more expensive than the last one, the fact the money goes to charity and the venue is walking distance from home, I couldn’t really not go. The last Twestival changed my life in such an amazing way, it’s something I think I will always support.

From now on, I should be able to update more often and keep you updated.

Swanny xx

Blogging hasn’t really been my forte of late. This is mainly due to my lack of Internet connection at home. I’m finding it increasingly hard to update from work (although, that’s what I’m doing now in my lunch break). Anyway, from Friday onwards I should be connected once again – I can’t wait! Not having Internet is like losing a limb to me. My BlackBerry has been a God send!!!

So, this week I threw my first event. It remained nameless until it was aptly hash tagged as #swannup by @kaigani. So Swannup it was! The event was originally going to be a small get together, but after tweeting about it, it got more interest and I’m very pleased to say around 30 people attended the invite only event at Village East in London Bridge There was a great mix of people there, including young budding entrepreneurs, serial twitterers and some very familiar faces from the London Tech Scene. I also met some people that I’ve been tweeting to for a very long time, some for as long as a year or more! I follow some very entertaining people and it’s nice to know they’re just as entertaining in real life

I was trying to lay off the booze with it being a school night and all, but that wasn’t to happen. The shots came out, as did the cocktails. It wasn’t all bad though as I discovered the most delicious cocktail ever named, Tirimisu MMMMMmmmmmm – Divine! Needless to say, I was pretty useless the following day LOL :S

It would be good to get some feedback about the event from the people who went along. Is it worth arranging again? Please let me know. If so, I’ll arrange one for sometime in September.

Right… time to do some work.

Ciao for now

Swanny xx

July has proved to be a manic one! With events, gigs and moving house, I can certainly say I am rather exhausted. Unfortunately I didn’t make it to a couple of the events due to moving commitments, however the events I did manage to get to were great!

Congratulations to Mike Butcher and the guys at Tech Crunch for a fun and memorable awards evening. Tech Crunch Europa winners included Huddle, Spotify and Nimbuzz amongst others. Spotify being the biggest winners of the night scooping 3 awards. The free champagne, wine and beer flowed for the majority of the evening, I for one certainly felt the effects in the morning. Events such as these are a great way to meet like minded people, budding entrepreneurs and generally get inspired. I met a fair few people I follow on Twitter and was very pleased to find they were just as entertaining in real life

Another event I have attended lately was The Big Ambition event in Victoria. The Big Ambition is a branch of e-skills and is geared towards attracting teenagers into the wonderful world of tech. The website features relevant tech news, profiles of inspirational people in the tech world and advice on IT education and careers.

This event was inspiration for me. The young people who I spoke to and their presentations wowed me. Their enthusiasm and drive to succeed gave me a real buzz and made me really want to help youngsters like them to achieve their goals. With Girls ‘n’ Gadgets, I feel I could do this and as a result, I have jotted down some ideas and spoken to a few people in the youth working fields as well as the tech field. More details to come… so watch this space.

The event was presented by the ITN news reader Alasdair Stewart who made the day fun, factual and gave the audience many a reason to pause for thought. The keynote was delivered by Lord Carter and companies involved included British Airways and IBM. Hermione Way from News Pepper covered the event and spoke on women in tech and the last Big Ambition event last year. It was a real eye opener for me as I haven’t been as in touch with the educational side as I want to be. It was most interesting to hear the young peoples views on the IT industry and the curriculum the have to follow. As I say, I will be following up on this subject very soon

Other fun events included the Blur concert in Hyde Park which was amazing. Since being a little indie chick back in the late 90’s, Blur have always been a band I have wanted to see and like the break up of Kula Shaker, the absence of Blur upset me quite back in the day. Damon was… Damon – He hasn’t changed at all it would seem. The big screen could have done with more shots of the lovely Alex though. I bought myself a Milk Carton T-Shirt (from the video of Coffee and TV) and drunk a fair amount of Pear Cider which was refreshing on such a hot day It’s certainly been a while since I have sat in my Bikini in London!!!

Finally, I attended Michal Acton Smith, Alex Tew and Tom Boardman’s legendary Berwickstock. What an evening that was! I donned my huge false lashes, naked Kate Moss T-Shirt, denim mini and large knit fishnets and partied the night away! Considering this was 2 days before my big move (and I hadn’t packed anything) I probably should have taken it easy and got home at a reasonable hour… that didn’t happen though LOL.

So that brings me to my move. I have now relocated from sunny Clapham to the nice and central London Bridge with my boy… I am loving it! We are nearly 2 weeks in and the place has a 42″ TV and most of the furniture (except for the table and chairs.) I have astounded myself at how many pairs of shoes/ bags & junk I own and am still slowly getting through it all. I think I counted about 60 pairs of shoes and they are not even fully unpacked!!!

Anyway… Off to watch some movies. Anyone who is involved in youth work, I would be very keen to hear from you. Also any companies that would like to get involved with some youth project, please also get in touch – leila at swanification dot com.

Ciao xx

I’ve been rather quiet on the old blogging front lately. I have been taking it easy really – no networking events at all. Despite the silence, it has been incredibly busy at times – with birthdays, catching up with friends and being away for the past two weekends. The biggest and best thing from the past few weeks is finding somewhere to live with my boy Only 2 and half weeks to go and I will be in my cute little two bedroom flat with him. *Very* excited! *fingers crossed* it all goes through fine! I am a total stress head!

July is going to be a busy one. Starting from this weekend in fact. First off I have TweetCamp which is being held at the Gumtree offices in Richmond. They’ve sold out and it promises to be a fun day out for all involved. The week after, I am going to see Blur at Hyde Park which I am very excited about It should be a great show. The week after that, I have two daily networking events – Reboot Britain and Big Ambition. The main networking event of the month (other than DrinkTank of course! ) is the Tech Crunch Awards on the 9th July which should be a lot of fun and ideally located for me (for once). Not forgetting *the* most exciting event of the month – My big move Very excited indeed!

So my updates in July should be a lot more regular… I’ll be blogging about all of the above events. Keep an eye on my twitter page for the links

Swanny xx

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Last night was the ever popular Shoreditch Twit. This time, there was a bit of a twist and I’m not just talking about the delicious fruit water from Sip Drinks on offer! Shoreditch Twit organiser Lewis Webb teamed up with the stunning Miggy from POUT and together they combined the beautiful world of modelling and fashion with the popular and sometimes geeky world of social media.

The venue, Dream Bags Jaguar Shoes, was aptly named for the event. With it’s exposed brick work and occasional paintings it had the Shoreditch vibe very much going on. Semi naked ladies roamed the room, modelling underwear from Mint Siren by Josefine Wing, Camera flashes were going off sporadically and of course plenty of alcohol was being consumed!

Unfortunately, I didn’t stay too long as I wasn’t feeling the best – But all involved seemed to be having a great time. Another successful Shoreditch Twit in the bag for Mr Webb! I shall certainly be at the next one

Swanny xx

So Friday night was the WAYN (Where Are You Now) Re-Launch party at The Kensington Roof Gardens. What a great venue! It was rather strange to be on a roof in the middle of London with flamingos walking around – Very odd but very pleasing! In my opinion, the only down side of the evening was the price of the drinks, they were outrageous! Luckily that didn’t stop anybody having fun and there was a very full dancefloor at 3am when the evening ended!

It was a warm summer evening and the garden was full of people chatting, listening to the live band and enjoying the barbecue. It was a fabulous turnout for the WAYN guys and the feedback on the new site was very positive from everyone I spoke to.

I must admit, I wasn’t really a fan of the old site. I found it a little childish looking and despite being a WAYN member for a many years, I probably only logged in a few times a year. The re-design and added features has brought them completely up to date and looks far more appealing than before. I shall certainly be logging in and updating my profile, which still has my picture of when I was 19! *cringe*

A *massive* congratulations to the WAYN team for a great new site and an awesome party. It was lovely to see lots of familiar faces there and some new ones too

So check out http://www.wayn.com/ and sign up today!

So for those of you who don’t know a great deal about me, here’s a better idea:-

My name is Leila and I’m a 27 year old tech fanatic who lives and works in London. When I’m not at my nine to five job at an investment bank in the City, I run a tech website site called Girls ‘n’ Gadgets . Any spare time I get, I spend at networking events to promote my website or with my boyfriend, who is my rock

I’m a real sucker for gadgets of all shapes and sizes. It’s a passion that has developed over the years since I was given my first gaming console (Super Nintendo – SNES) when I was 10. Having spent much of my childhood in a small room button bashing to Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, it was only natural for me to progress to the wonderful world of the Internet where I started my first blog. After using a number of different sites such as Livejournal, Xanga and Diaryland, I eventually settled on the very friendly Opera Community.

Since January 2004 I have blogged and bitched under the name fluffybunny and it has proved to be a very pleasant and rewarding experience. Within my first year blogging at Opera, I was named ‘Member of the Week’ and from there on, my involvement with Opera has been a fond one – reviewing their products and in particular their browser for the Nintendo DS Lite. The most unforgettable memory was helping organise and set up the Opera Backstage: London event in 2006, which was a great success and as a thank you, they flew me to Norway to meet the team. Very Awesome and *lovely* people!

These days I can be found evangelising about my favourite startups such as ilikeucoz, Strands and Fund it Frog. I’m still a keen gamer and am proud to say, still have my SNES, MasterSystem and DreamCast as well as a Wii, PS3 and DS Lite. I’m sure there are more lol. I enjoy going to gigs and festivals. I’m a huge sports fan – Football being my favourite. I’m a massive Arsenal and Rangers fan!

I’m a self confessed Twittaholic, pretty much since I got my iPhone last July.
You can follow me here —->

Well I think as Porky Pig would say, ‘That’s all folks!’

Swanny xx