Bringing Social Media to the Pub

This week, I livecovered the second “Barter for Beer Night” for the Marksman Pub in London.

Back when I was at Sky News over Easter I reported on the first night.

For those who don’t know, it’s a night when you can offer your goods and services in return for beers and meals at the pub.

Here’s the clip I took for Sky:

The pub’s landlady, Dawn Kolpin, started the idea after she needed some CD’s for her jukebox. She placed an ad on Craigslist, a local classified ads site.

She was so taken aback by the enthusiasm by her local Londoners that she decided to make it a regular night.

So where does Social Media fit into all this?

We’re hoping to slowly bring the world of social media bursting into this classic East End pub.

At the event, my friend Eddie Vassallo manned the twitter deck, which was projected up onto a big screen for all the punters to see. He even got some barters over twitter!

AudioBoo also displayed its amazing potential to capture the moment. Dawn loves people bartering their talents, like this muscian: (Please try to click the play button, I can’t work out why AudioBoo’s player won’t emebed properly)

On my trusty iPhone, I Qikked away capturing live clips of the barters in action:

Our multimedia efforts resulted a massive boost in traffic and interest for the pub. But this is only the beginning. I’m working on getting the online community involved from across the world.

Very soon, we hope to accept barters online, through twitter and seesmic. Seesmic is like youtube for conversations in video clips.

Picture the scene…

You’re coming to London on a budget, so you record a clip of you and your guitar and send it to the pub.

It earns you both a gig and free meal. Result!

I love it when technology creates relationships and brings people together, best of all in the most traditional of British places: the pub.

Fancy a barter for beer? The landlady keeps a list of her wanted items here.