Lauren Cotton's blog

Just over three weeks remaining til Chinwag's Careers Day @ Social Media Week London, supported by JobisJob UK - so we thought we'd give you a little taster of who you can expect to meet at the event later this month. With the likes of Nokia, Financial Times, Ve Interactive and more, it'll definitely be an fanastic chance you won't want to miss out on!

The Careers Day is taking place on Friday 28th September on the final day of this September's Social Media Week London. In the main exhibitor hall, you'll be able to meet premier agencies, start-ups and brands, there'll also be a programme of workshops, CV surgeries and Porfolio Review sessions so you can make the most of your day by brushing up on your skills.

So to give you a sneak preview of who can you expect to meet there...

In some very exciting news, Digital Mission is returning with it's fourth trip to New York this Autumn, from 28th October - 2nd November.

Following on from 2010's successful Digital Mission to NYC trip, this Mission to New York will co-incide with JUMP, Econsultancy's conference focusing on the latest trend, 'Joined-up Marketing' - bringing Online and Offline together, successfully.

The packed programme builds on the Digital Mission's momentum and relationships with New York-based entrepreneurs, agencies, and digital practitioners to create a cracking line up of activities.

Social Media Week London is on its way! Starting today, you can register for your favorite events. Head over to the schedule to reserve your seat & let us know that you are attending, register by doing the following:

I don't know about you, but I can't believe it's pretty much the end of August already. This year seems to have passed very quickly in a bit of a blur, and that's just 8 months. So what about 10 years?

In 2002 I was still in secondary school, I remember waiting patiently at grey desktop PC's watching the little egg-timer tick over as internet pages took forever to load and being introduced to the magically efficient shiny new Google. How times have changed, as bestedsites.com's infographic looking at how the internet has changed over the past decade shows.

Sizzling sausages and other char-grilled delights are on the menu at our Late Summer BBQ on Thursday 13th September, combined with the opportunity for Chinwaggers, the Digital Mission alumni and Social Media Week London-ers to gather, mingle, chat and sip a cold beverage. Let's face it, we don't need much of an excuse and it will be the end of Summer, post- Olympics and Paralympics and right before everything kicks off for Social Media Week London!

So, all of our wonderful Hub spaces have been announced, all represented on the above map (which you can view on Google Maps here). But what event topics will be based where? And what events go into a Hub?

The SMWLDN Hub Schedules will be carefully curated to include some of the week's best events. We'll be working with sponsors and partners for some events, and other Hub spaces are open for your own inclusion! If you'd like your event to be featured in a Hub, please check out this blog post to find out how to apply.

The SMWLDN Hub Schedules will be announced soon, in the mean time, check out what you can expect to find in each SMWLDN Hub below.

We said there were more to come, and as promised, here they are!

In this second announcement, we have another three SMWLDN Sept '12 Hub to introduce you to, on top of our previous announcement of ExHoSo House, Google Campus, The Hub Westminster, O2 Workshop and Unruly Media - giving us a total of 8 SMWLDN Sept '12 Hubs for the week.

As explained in the last announcement, each SMWLDN Sept '12 Hubs will have a topic area, and events taking place in the Hub will focus and/or relate to that particular Hub's topic area. Each Hub's schedule is being carefully curated, Hub events will highlight and showcase some of the best SMWLDN events taking place this September. Also, with London being a bit of a beast with events taking place all over the city, we hope that this will make SMWLDN easier to navigate, both physically and on the online schedule.

Are you planning an event during Social Media Week London this September (24th - 28th)?  Have you submitted it to the schedule yet? You need to make it quick, the event submission deadline is 21st August, just two weeks away!

Also, the SMWLDN Sept '12 Schedule goes live tonight, with our official London schedule launch tomorrow morning. 

Not to worry, we have all you need to know to submit your event below.

With 180+ events taking place across London, it can sometimes be a little difficult to navigate and get between events. To aid this problem, this September we're introducing SMWLDN Hubs to London, where events topics and some of the best events will be grouped into venues during the week.

We're very excited to introduce five Hubs for this year's SMWLDN Sept '12 at some very cool venues, with more Hubs and their topics to be announced.

During Digital Shoreditch last May, Chinwag held a very successful Careers Day where employers such as Bloomberg, Mozilla Firefox, Financial Times, LBi, Unruly Media, Beyond, Yammer and more were able to meet top candidates and showcase their companies and vacancies.

On top of meeting fantastic brands and agencies, candidates were able to take advantage of a programme of advice sessions including CV Surgeries, Portfolio Reviews & Creativity Workshops.

The day was a huge hit with 23 brands exhibiting, 20 mentors, 100+ individual advice sessions, 120+ workshop delegates and 1000+ job seekers through the door. Check out the event highlights, top tips and advice from our mentors & sponsors here.

After recieving such great feedback during and after the event we decided that we'd love to do it all over again, and what better time than during this September's Social Media Week London.

With only 8 weeks (or two months, as we prefer to think of it) remaining, Social Media Week London is slowly, but surely, creeping up on us.

We're very excited to announce that we have some incredible sponsors and partners on board for the week, and who better to share the news with than you! In this first announcement, we're very happy to introduce and welcome Vitrue and Unique Digital...

After 10,000+ entries globally, including Bogata's skyline, LA's beaches, Barcelona's architecture, Hong Kong's night lights, Chicago's public art and of course London's various attractions through the Jubilee and heading into the Olympics, #InstagramYourCity has announced it's city and overall winners.

The tough decisions came down to a judging panel of Dan Rubin, Columbian photographer Mauricio Velez, social media leader Todor Krecu, founder of Stickygram Kejia Zhu and Social Media Week's founder Toby Daniels.

The winning image and all city finalists are included below.

This Tuesday (17th July) we held our second Facebook Marketing Bootcamp at We Are What We Do in London. With Facebook trainer, Tania Jackson of Red Idea on hand, the day-long workshop aims to provide a hands-on and more personalised approach where attendees can learn what they can do to improve their techniques and strategies and how to do it.

We thought we'd share just a few things we learnt from Tuesday's Bootcamp.

Whilst everyone's aware that the web is an ever-growing mass of interlinked pages & apps with interactive content, videos, photos and more, most people don't think so much about the web technologies and browsers that support everything and make it all possible.

The rather pretty image above is a fantastic visualisation representing the interaction between web technologies and browsers - which bring to life the many powerful web apps used daily.

It was bound to happen at some point...the Online Internet Cat video craze is moving Offline with the launch of the world's first Internet Cat Video Film Festival.

Internet cat vidoes have entertained and amused us for a while now. Traditionally spread virally via email or social networks, most viewers watch the short video clips of feline tomfoolery alone...until now.

Walker Open Field have annouced that on 30th August, they'll be holding the first Internet Cat Video Film Festival, for free, projecting the best clips for everyone to openly LOL and 'awwww' together.

Celebrating this move (and being the resident Chinwag cat-lady), there's some of our favourite cat-clips below: