RegentTweet - interesting ideas and great day out in London with my son

 

I decided to travel to London for RegentTweet yesterday mainly to spend a day out in London with my son, but this programme for blogger ladies surprised me on many levels and ultimately kicked off a brainstorming session in my head too. There were few reasons why I got involved in the RegentTweet int he first place.

The Good

I do not like shopping and I am not a fan of high street myself, you see. However 2012 is a year of surprising experiences and I like to test my own boundaries. I think from this point of view the shop crawling experience was indeed one of a kind, in a positive sense! I did not know the architecture and layout of Regent Street. I was not aware of the range of shops and food and drink experiences in this rather central area of London. I know few good coffee shops in Oxford Circus area and that's about it! So when I finished listening to the presentations at the Apple store, registered at Swarovski lounge (after rather stylishly served coffee), and finished a Martini with geek ladies (so good to see some of you and meet some of you too!) I took my son for a game: finding a shop according to its address and name, looking inside of the shop for a QR code and finding out what the surprise present is all about. Can you imagine a better game for a 6 year old who loves to interact with people, search for answers and loves a bit of mystery? 

The Bad

So together with my little Holmes we have found few shops, received few pretty goodie bags and observed the service in listed stores. I have to admit the entire day was carefully designed and planned and most of the stores briefed their staff to look out for ladies with RegentTweet badges so the process of claiming rewards was fairly easy. Few shops struggled with too many areas of service and it was a bit difficult to find out the right person to talk to (we did not manage to work out how to join the cupcake course in the end). I have also come across a shop which run out of goodie bags (funnily enough it's not a nice feeling to learn about it - despite of the fact we were really not fixed on the rewards themselves - so I have learned my lesson when planning blogger engagement never to set up the first come first get type of activities!). I also would like to see the central event Twitter account responding to questions on-line more often (my tweet on running late was left unanswered). But apart of those small observations the entire experience was rewarding, interesting, exciting but non-intrusive, and really well planned.  

The Brilliant

I like the combination of socialising with geek ladies you know or really wish to meet together with notion of a game conducted both off-line as well as on-line. I like the kick off at Apple Store and central reference point at Swarovski. I also think that free drinks somehow make the day run more smoothly too;) On the top of the generally positive impressions as a blogger, geek but also social media consultant working in planning similar projects I really appreciate the fact that every single person involved in the process was open and positive about my son. I did not plan for him to join me originally but due to the series of circumstances he had to join me (and was also rewarded with a little bit of London sightseeing afterwards), but my son knows what I do for living and took RegentTweet as an introduction to what "mum does for living" which ultimately was fun! 

I had a great time. He had a great time. We have both learned a lot. We both had fun. I loved to meet friends and make new connections. I have discovered few great places in central London and even I might actually go back and do some shopping one day! So I consider RegentTweet a brilliant idea and would like to thank the organisers and London Girl Geek Dinners for the invite! 

Disclaimer: during the event I was offered small goodie bags (incl. two t-shirts and samples of cosmetics) but those did not affect my opinions in this posts whatsoever and I did my best to keep it as objective as possible.