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Last night’s Social Media Café event at The Northern exceeded my expectations.

Firstly, turn out was impressive, I’m not sure of numbers but there were at least 50 people in the audience.

A minute of online research unearths the facts: according to one of the organiser’s tweets, over 80 people turned up!

As is fitting for a gathering of social media aficionados, there are pictures and videos from the event all over the web.

It was great fun taking part in the ‘Is Blogging Dead?’ debate and I felt privileged to share a panel with social media gurus like Craig McGinty, behind popular blog about moving to France ThisFrenchLife and Martin Byrant, the award-winning blogger behind ManchesterBuses and 14sandwiches.com.

Sarah Hartley, illustrious blogger at the Manchester Evening News was a very engaging chair who deftly managed to combine playing devil’s advocate with live streaming the debate with her Nokia phone!

For those that would prefer an abridged version of the night’s events, here’s a 3 page listing of tweets from @michaelcooper’s very comprehensive live tweeting of the event.

There have been some excellent write ups about the event around the web.  Here’s one from the talented team at PR firm Staniforth who also interviewed me after the debate.  That felt rather special indeed!  Look forward to seeing the video when it is live.

The audience was an interesting mix.  There were well read bloggers like David Bird, the guy behind the interesting FacebookCreep blog, IT marketing companies and online community start ups.

The best thing about the evening was certainly the networking.  As well as catching up with old friends, I met a number of really interesting folk and came away awed by how much effort is already being invested in social media across the board in the North West.

Watch this space, there’s some very exciting work going on!

My favourite question of the night was the one that queried whether the speakers were guilty of using blogging to continue the old ‘broadcast’ model rather than using it as a platform to collaborate with others.

Certainly food for thought and one that at least one other social media practitioner in the UK is asking.

Craig McGinty rightly pointed out that the ‘Comment Box’ after each blog post turns the blogging platform into a two way dialogue.

I answered by sharing that I do a lot of event blogging mostly to point people to links and online resources mentioned by speakers at events and conferences I attend.

I also liked the question about which were my top 3 blogs at the moment.

I would like to point out that I meant ‘alleyinsider.com’ when I referred to SiliconAlley.com.

AlleyInsider, written by Peter Blodget and his crack team of bloggers and journalists, covers media, tech and finance news with a practical, no-nonsense, real world perspective.

AlleyInsider is great for finding out what the dips and hockey sticks of tech industry stock of companies like Google and Apple say about the economy at large, in language that non-stockmarket savvy folk can understand.

I really should know what their domain name is by heart but often get directed to it from uber-useful tech blog aggregator, Techmeme.

My other fave blogs (at the moment) were dooce.com, written by stay-at-home-mum Heather B. Armstrong and the Samsung Pixon photo site and social media experiment, thephotographicadventuresofnickturpin.com

This being the first event of its kind, it was hard to assess how much the audience already knew about blogging.

I was pleased to have experienced bloggers like Craig and Martin alongside me as much of what they contributed to in response to Sarah’s and the audience’ questions assured me that we covered much of the basics.

Here’s a 2 minute video featuring one of Martin’s erudite responses.

I’m certainly looking forward to the next Social Media Cafe in Manchester.   Already I hear there are plans to include a screen and projector so that the Twitter back channel can be more involved in the event.  Can’t wait!

Photo credit:  MartinSFP’s Flickr Stream

UPDATE: Here’s even more blog coverage of the event! Click on to read:

Martin Byrant’s brilliantly titled ‘Manchester - Social Media City’ post

Craig McGinty’s reminder about why ‘your blog is your base’

Sarah Hartley’s ‘Bloggers’ Verdict‘ article at the Manchester Evening News

UPDATE 2:  There is now a Social Media Cafe Manchester Wiki with dates of future events and opportunities for those who want to get involved.