The end is nigh. But in a good way

In case you were wondering, the discussions went well. I am a happy bunny who should soon have a stable income. More details as they're confirmed.
Managed to catch the last part of the Social Tools in Enterprise Symposium in London yesterday, which comprised the last section of David Gurteen's Social Software Cafe, and Euan Semple's presentation about the use of social tools internally at the BBC. Very interesting stuff – Euan's a good presenter, as I suspected he would be.
The fun bit, though, was going for dinner afterwards. Had the chance to catch up with Lee Bryant, Anu Gupta and Phil Wolff, all of whom I met last week at BlogTalk. Also saw George Por, Matt, whose baby STES was, and his business partner Paolo. The fun bit, though was meeting Stowe Boyd, who is just a darling and seeing Doc Searls again, who is even more of a darling.
I was delighted to find out that Stowe's name is as much a creation of beneficent chance as mine is. My 'w' came from a typo some 10 years ago; Stowe's first name came from a novel shortening of Christopher, with a 'we' added a little later.
Hm, this has made me realise that I don't know why Doc is called Doc.
Anyway, after dinner we all pitched off down the pub to continue the conversation – which appeared mainly to involve hassling Matt – with eventually just Stowe, Doc, Greg Narain and I left. It's been a long while since I gave thought to matters geological, but with Doc being very knowledgeable about the subject, and Stowe just as clued up, we had a great conversation about earthquakes and the human obsession for trying to tame nature. As I was trying to keep up I think some neurons got fired that probably hadn't been fired for at least a decade. I'm surprised they were still there.
Great fun, interesting conversations and fascinating company. I managed to get a few photos before my battery gave out, although it's a small miracle that I remembered I had my camera with me in the first place. You know what I'm like.

A startled Anu and a suave Stowe

Doc. Demon geologist

Phil, just prior to revealing an important insight regarding the blogosphere
Maybe you should all be thankful that my camera ran out of battery at this point.