Leemail at the Tavern

I returned to London from Luxembourg on Thursday afternoon. During the evening on Thursday I went to the last ever meeting of “The Fantastic Tavern”. An extremely charismatic colleague of mine has been running this informal digital user community for the last three years. Thursday’s huge event with a few hundred people was my first and last Tavern. The original intention was for a few friends to go for beers and discuss new ideas and trends in the digital marketplace. The community has grown exponentially and Thursday’s event was a far cry from those humble beginnings. Each Tavern copies the format of well known TV programme e.g. “who wants to be a millionaire” or “Family Fortunes”. On Thursday the Tavern was held in the ultra modern Ravensbourne University (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravensbourne_(college)) next to the O2 centre in Greenwich in East London. The selected style was Jeremy Clarkson’s Top Gear. Matt had roped in 10 digital, media or architecture and design students plus a smattering of entrepreneurs to each present one trend or product that they thought would be important in 2012. It was wonderful to see such a large group of people sharing ideas in such an informal and enjoyable fashion (the evening was even capped off with music and the DJ called “Jesus” from the well known London club Fabric (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabric_(club)). Apart from being given a highly memorable guided tour of the university, the idea for 2012 that stuck out for me (and many others), was “Leemail” – a simple idea and an innovative new product that allows you to take back your privacy from the invasive internet… (https://leemail.me/) – I’ll be signing up for one of these I can assure you!