It's been ten years since I first opened up about the idea of having a regular meet up in London for people who were generally interested in how social media was playing out. I came to the format that became weekly Tuttle: no speakers, theme or "format", no real structure or formality, just a weekly couple of hours to get together and talk about what we were doing - everyone equal.
At the time there were a number of other meet ups happening for similar groups of people. There was a pattern of event that was the "Bloggers Meetup". These were organised by a (usually) prominent blogger. They'd write on their blog something like:
"I'm going to be in London next Wednesday. If any of you want to come and have a coffee with me, just turn up at 11am. I'll be there through till lunchtime. Leave a comment if you intend to come."
And people would turn up and talk to the great blogger and of course there were often more people there than the blogger could talk to so we spoke to each other too. Over time it became clear to me that there was something in this format, but I didn't want to do something so self-centred, it seemed to me that it was too much about one person and that most of the people who went were worthy of an event for themselves too.
We also had monthly events like Social Media Club, started by Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells in California. So much seemed to happen in California - I was quite envious, but when they happened to be over one time, they started a chapter in London and left it in someone else's hands and then I picked it up after a couple of months. I wanted to do something different from this too. It was almost mandated that we had a theme and a sponsor and a whole structure that was sometimes useful and sometimes worked against us. I also wanted to do something for the people who were making the media, bloggers and podcasters, as much as the media people who wanted to get involved in something new.
I also knew I didn't want to do something in the evening. Too many meet ups still are arranged around people who work a nine-to-five job and usually involve beers, in a pub. The beginning of these things works well, but as it wears on and people drink more, especially in a place like London with a hard drinking culture, the conversation just gets worse. Over coffee in the morning, you are restricting to a certain type of person who can walk away from their desk (if they have one) for a while, but the conversation just gets more excitable.
Sculpture can be a subtractive art. You start with a block of stone and then take away the bits that aren't required.
So I knew lots of things that I didn't want it my thing to be. So I chipped away all of those things and it started to take shape.