I finally made it today to The Tuttle Club, the London social media cafe organised by Lloyd Davis. At present it is only open on Friday morning above the Coach and Horses in Soho ... but as Lloyd told me the aim is to develop a permanent space that will provide for a mix of sociability, work and learning.
I love Lloyd's approach. While others might have agonised about the business plan, membership criteria, and marketing, he has just got on and evolved it in the spirit of social media: prototype by focusing on the people and expecting the connections and creativity to follow. There's more about how it started on the Club blog, and you can sign up for future prototyping events here.
Lloyd explained that the club is named after Harry Tuttle, the Robert de Niro character in the movie Brazil. He's a freelance heating engineer in a dystopian world where freelance heating engineers are illegal, and he's treated as a terrorist. Lloyd says:
He makes things work, he makes things happen by poking around in the stuff without going through all the paper work. To me he's a revolutionary figure, working below the radar of everything .... and that struck a chord with me in terms of the sort of bloggy, podcasty, social media types that we are.
Me too - can you resist becoming a friend of Harry? And if you have any free or low-cost space where Lloyd and friends could take prototyping to the next level of working and learning, even better. It doesn't have to be permanent at the start - just a place to get together and experiment. You'll find Lloyd's main home and contact details over here, or pop in one Friday. Qype have sponsored the coffee and croissants.
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Hear hear. Fantastic job Lloyd. Based on my experience this morning, the cafe's a terrific blend of informality and usefulness (as opposed to formality and uselessness - which has made up much of the remainder of my afternoon sadly).
Posted by: Pete Goold | March 07, 2008 at 09:53 PM