Happy Chinese New Year

“Gong Xi Fa Cai”

Happy Chinese New Year.

I have in a Chinese feast to celebrate tonight.

On film

Behind the scenes

With my personal hat on, as the proud owner/dweller (liveaboard) of a widebeam barge, I’ll be on TV tomorrow night, apparently.

Just over a week ago my family filmed for the ‘living the Dream’ feature on BBC South Today, and have been told that it will be on tomorrow. the show starts at 6.30 but we’ll be on apparently around 6.45.

I have a degree of fear and dread, of course, around what will emerge, especially as youngest son insists on telling the world about our toilets!

Tune in a let us know what you think!

Confession of a PR girl

Claire Thompson, freelance PR consultant, January 2012

3D printer prototype at TVSMC, January 2012

So, hot on the heels of my year’s first blog, this is 2012 blog two.

In all honesty it should have been written last year, but firstly I needed to think carefully before I wrote it – it’s touched a nerve or two. And secondly, but not unrelated, I took some time off over the Christmas period to be with my family.

You see, towards the end of last year I noticed I was choking more than usual. Things came to a crunch at a client event, a wine tasting in Oxford, when I took a sip of wine and found myself attracting attention for the ensuing choking, only just managing to hold down the delicious tapas I’d just eaten.

I was convinced it wasn’t throat cancer, having seen a close friend go through that illness, and how quickly it takes hold and worsens. Whatever was wrong had been coming on over the course of months, maybe longer. But the doctor took it seriously and booked me for some tests.

It’s funny how, faced with the possibility of something that big you get a degree of clarity about what’s important in your life (and as a friend is going through something major right now, life felt a little gloomy). Funnily enough I had a lot of people I wanted to say sorry to and wanted to go back and explain some things. (I didn’t, but still might!)

But partly because of the spectre of being ill, partly because visiting doctors and hospitals ate into my work time, I had to decide where I wanted to spend time.

So immediately after December’s TVSMC (Thames Valley Social Media Café), I headed off for a barium meal at the Royal Berkshire Hospital.

It had been odd looking at the people at TVSMC and thinking “If I was seriously ill and couldn’t come back, what would I miss?” And the answer was clear: wonderful, clever, sharing people who I aspire to be like, and whose greater qualities I hope will rub off, from the uber organised Caalie (who juggles managing two great little startups and four great little (and not so little) offspring, and still manages a social life and sanity) to the uber clever Dan Benton, whose enthusiasm makes the interplay between the physical and virtual worlds fun (from flinging wet sponges at a target  – in this case me, for Twestival –  when someone tweets to delivering biscuits around the office in a tweeting train), and all the people in between that I’m not going to mention in case I forget someone, from academics to politicians! (Please don’t be cross with me for mentioning/not mentioning you here, guys, if you’re reading this.)

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Rounding up the final thupr – deeper stuff!

Claire Thompson, Thames-valley based freelance PR Consultant, Waves PR

With the dust settled on the final thupr event, I thought it appropriate to create a final blogpost, rounding up the good stuff that happened. In due course, I’ll share some of the learnings from thupr, but in the meantime, here’s some of the material that the last event generated:

Claire Thompson: The final thupr (A preview to the event)

Emily Breder: On engagement (Participant)

Halima Amin: The Final Countdown (An event roundup)

Claire Thompson: Music, Money and PR Prats (And event round up)

Gareth Cousins: How to brief musicians A guide for PR folk

The future

Today I plan to throw open thupr to the community of people who have shown an interest in at some point. Our plans for ramping it up really weren’t sustainable, and whilst charging was an option, I personally don’t think that’s the right thing to do in this day and age. The old maxim ‘you get what you pay for’ has never been less true!

Thupr was always a horrible name, but one we got stuck with. So I’m changing the name of the group to Deeper – a mix of digital + engagement + PR – and throw it open for anyone who has conversations they want to start to go ahead and do so. I’ll offer what support I can, but the settings on the meetup have changed. We have a group of over 400 people with diverse interests and skills to share. If anyone has thoughts on rules, they should share them.

Over the next week or so, they will all be made co-organisers. I’m leaving myself as an organiser only to be able to remove spammers.  It really is ‘over to you’…..