Last Minute Invitation to the Eat Out Conference and Golf on a Sunday

I started writing this post last Sunday. It has been such a hectic week, that I'm only finishing it now. (Bad blogger...bad blogger)
Here goes:

By the time Friday came around I was ready for a nice quiet Saturday, filled with cricket, football and rugby.. and well, just general unwinding from the hectic week.
So when I saw the below tweet, I was in two minds about whether to respond or not.

What followed was quite funny. I replied to the tweet to both @Eat_Out and @Gabbles17 to say that it sounded like fun. A few minutes later I got a response from @Eat_Out asking if I was playing hard to get and if I wanted the ticket or not. I was caught a bit off guard. I hadn't seen anything about the Eat Out Conference, so wasn't sure what to expect. I decided that I would go. And with 45 minutes to get showered, dressed, drive from the Northern Suburbs to The Westin AND register to make the 9am start, I had to move it.

I made it on time and was more than pleased to run into an old friend who I hadn't seen in years.
I felt a bit intimidated as the room was filled with SA Culinary Royalty, as well as many well known food bloggers and critics (one of the critics felt rather strongly about the role of amateur food bloggers..).

I found the talks very interesting, particularly Margot Janse and Luke Dale-Roberts (actually all of them). I read a blog post from someone who attended who was less than complimentary of Luke's talk. Not being a fan of public speaking myself, I can imagine how daunting it must have been for Luke to get up in front of everyone and give a talk. I thought he did quite well and the videos that he showed were amazing.

During one of the breaks I took the opportunity to have a chat with Gabrielle. It's always good to put a face to a twitter handle. You can check out her work on http://www.deepfriedbananas.com/ .

After the event I found myself discussing the role of social media in the industry with some of the folk from The Culinary Academy. Thanks to my recently completed Social Media course, I actually made some sense. There's a first for everything.

Sunday brought my monthly round of golf with my social golf society. November was Mowbray GC and despite the greens being a little on the slow side (I mean slow), I had a decent enough round and shot a 92, which was good enough for my partner and I to claim second. Unfortunately, not everyone's wine knowledge is 'up there' and third place ended up getting a better bottle of red... Oh well. It's not about the prizes anyway. I had a lot of fun.

N.