Edinburgh Coffee Morning Round up

As I may or may not have blogged about before (if you've met me in person, I've certainly gone on about it), the Edinburgh Digital/Creative Coffee Morning is something thoroughly I look forward to every week. As the usual blogger, Mike, is away this week and I've been meaning to write about it for ages, I thought I would do the post/update.

Inspired by the London Coffee Mornings organised by Russell Davies, the lovely Mr. Mike Coulter of Digital Agency began one in Edinburgh just over a year ago and due to the numbers this morning, with a few regulars away on business, I think it's going rather well.

The amalgamation of people and minds from all different backgrounds - present and past - always sends me away with a renewed appreciation for the world, myself and gives me that much needed boost to jump on the next project (or maybe finish one of the five I am already working on!).

Today we had (and I'm sorry if I don't have your name or link here) an Author, William Coles, but we call him Bill; a producer/director, Tim Maguire, whom you might remember from the Savage Night shoot; Copywriter & cofounder of Mightysmall, Adrian Jeffry; freelance copywriter, Chris Muir; PR man, Chris Welton from Hot Tin Roof; freelance content development guru Andy Hyde from Recent Changes; Whitespacer Nev Stokes and Jon Mountjoy, developer (to say the least) from Force.com.

There were more - many more, but I'm afraid I would mangle their jobs and such up more than I would do any good.

Both weeks we've touched on a topic about how people are so networked these days, with the help of, yes, social media, that when someone hires you for a freelance job, they are often hiring your network as well. However, what does this mean to them in terms of getting the job done? Because they have outsourced to you, is it wrong for you to outsource parts of the job as well, to ensure the job is done by the best person for it? Is there an ethical line there somewhere that people need pay attention not to cross (i.e. claiming anothers work as ones own).

For a while the topic was the credit crunch, banks buying banks and all that jazz, but frankly, I'm sick of it and am not going to write any more about it here if I don't have to.

Friday's are great for many reasons: to get me out of bed; to be social and see what everyone is up to; to maybe make some business connections; to share ideas and drink cappuccino's that have to be made with crack - 1 great, 2 the shakes, but they're damn tasty... Back on track - these coffee mornings level me and keep me optimistic. Everyone needs people who are on the same page as them and many are lucky to work with such people everyday. I'm lucky enough to meet with a group of them once a week and if you're in town - we'd love for you to join us.

Edinburgh Digital/Creative Coffee morning meets every Friday, 8a.m. (come later if you need to, leave early if you need to - we're easy!) Centortre, 103 George Street.

You can find more posts about Edi Coffee Mornings on Mike Coulter's Digital Agency site and pictures on his flickr.