And so the blog has been in existence for 7 days and I am getting a steady stream of 60-80 people every day. So it’s a start.

However, beyond the promising nature of the idea itself, the eG8 was disappointing. The content of the conference was substandard considering who was actually sitting on the panels. And it was clearly (very well) organised but in an old school style where there was a linear agenda that everybody was ‘forced’ to attend – stopping people from discussing issues and networking amongst themselves outside of the ongoing plenary session.

All of the value for Sarko & his team (including Maurice Levy) was in the political theatre and the kudos earned by attracting the likes of Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerburg with only a few weeks notice. All of the value for delegates was to be had outside of the official conference – in the cafes, smoking areas and social events that surrounded the conference.

But we all know that new technology platforms tend to experience teething problems and are not adopted by the mainstream for quite a while. But I am surprised by the number of tech savvy consumers who have been struggling with their new connected TVs. Here’s a first hand experience from a friend of mine who works as CTO for a tech start up. He has been in technology and software for the past 30 years. So he knows a thing or two about tech.

“Just so you know, I bought a new Sony Bravia TV with an IPTV service. The intention was to see how the new TV-based services worked in comparison to PC-based, and STB-based approaches (I also have 2x AppleTVs (1st and 2nd gen), a PS3, Xbox 360 and a Mac mini-based system for TV viewing).

I also tried to find out how to access Lovefilm from the PS3 but failed – I will now search the internet for instructions.”

There is no doubt that the people behind all of theses TV-based UIs and services need to spend more time on the user experience & UI. In the rush to get widgets, apps and partners signed up, it looks like they have forgotten about their consumer and how they will experience the service.

Over the last 3 months I have seen enough evidence that device manufacturers are becoming aware of this problem as they work on using companion devices (iPads/SmartPhones) to provide a better experience for the user. Will be watching this space.

How wrong was I. The second BathSpark event was announced last week and the 100 tickets were picked up within 24 hours.

Bath has a vibrant and growing group of people who work in Tech, and I am glad that BathSpark can act as a bit of a focal point for them all. Truly exciting.

And then I did something about it by launching Drink|Tech|Bath and tweeting about it. Within a week we had over 40 members signed up – all great people from companies like Google, Cisco, Future, LoveHoney, Picochip, The Filter, IPL, Microsoft, etc…

There are already a number of other great events in Bath (like Bathcamp.org), but the demand for a purely social event that mixes up all types (entrepreneurs, creatives, engineers, marketers, etc) has truly blown me away.

So, due to the massive demand, I have had to make some very quick decisions on venue, dates, sponsors, and more. And here are the main headlines:

Organisers: this is a bigger event than I thought with a lot of potential. To make sure it is well organised, I have joined forces with Tim Tucker, Tom Lewis and Keir Whitaker – they all have significant experience in organising events like this (in Bristol, Bournemouth and London) and bring a lot of fresh ideas, energy and additional contacts into the mix.

Venue: we decided to go for a venue that can cater for up to 100 people and that can give us a private space for the event. I am delighted to confirm that the good folk at Market have made their first floor available to us.

Date: the choice of venue means we have to change the date of the first meetup to Wednesday 23rd February, from 6pm. Please add this to your diaries!

Sponsors: we have secured a sponsor for the first event so we can provide free drinks. I am just crossing ‘T’s and dotting ‘I’s and will announce who it is in the next few days.

Name: In joining forces with Tim, Tom and Keir we have decided to rename the event BathSpark. My initial name of DrinkTechBath was a bit literal (I took 5 mins to come up with that), whereas BathSpark has as much potential as the event itself.

We will be making the name changes to the website/meetup.com page and twitter handle in the next few days. So keep an eye out for any mention of BathSpark!

Click here to sign up for the event and/or to stay informed about up and coming BathSpark evenings. And feel free to pass on this link to others.

Turns out he lives in Bath too and works on Android for Google in London.

This made me think. I know lots of people who work on cool tech projects for great companies who live in the Bath area. And without doubt those people know a load more. Wouldn’t all of these people enjoy and value a few pints once a month and a chance to meet up and swap ideas? I think so.

Off the top of my head we can already get a few people from Carsonified, SubHub, Pico, The Filter, digital folk from Future and Future Plus as well as any number of tech peeps who live in Bath but work somewhere else (I know of execs from Google, Orange, O2 and Microsoft).

A few hours after my random encounter, Drink|Tech|Bath was born. Well, I have designed a logo, emailed 20 key tech people I know in Bath and have had offers already from a number of people to help make this a reality.

If you live/work in Bath in tech and you are keen to help make this happen or you simply want to be invited along to the Drink|Tech|Bath, follow and contact us via Twitter (@drinktechbath).

Meanwhile, if you have any ideas/suggestions, please send them to us on twitter or add a comment to this story. I will set up a Drink|Tech|Bath site in the next few days to capture this.

Erik Huggers (Director of Future Media and Technology at the BBC) provides a clear summary of what the unified strategy looks like and what it means for the BBC’s people. Well worth a read.

The main message I take from this is that the BBC needs to focus on the things it does brilliantly in terms of the internet. It shouldn’t be competing with commercial publishers on specialist subject websites – hence the announcement that most programme websites will be created using automated content. It should, however, be making all BBC content (audio and video) available to me (the tax payer) as and when I want it, on any device I choose. That would make the licence fee worthwhile.

With that in mind, it is good to read that a key part of the strategy is to focus on enhancing the iPlayer to include more relevant content (e.g. news & comment) and offer users the ability to personalise the service to match their taste. In my mind that means the BBC will look to connect me to the BBC content I will like at the right time, place and on the best device. Can’t wait!

First the backdrop – best illustrated by a quote from google’s Erik Schmidt “Between the birth of the world and 2003, there were five exabytes of information created. We [now] create five exabytes every two days. See why it’s so painful to operate in information markets?”

This is backed up by more data stats. I read in a great blog post from Brett King on the world of exponential data grwoth that Facebook users share 30 billion pieces of content every month, the Twitterati create 95m tweets every day and You Tube users upload 24 hours of video every minute.

It is fair to conclude, therefore, that there is more content than we could ever cope with. Question is, if less is more, is the reverse true? Does more content actually deliver less enjoyment? Well, no. With the advent of intelligent filters that use historic activity, context, social influence, etc, we are already learning how to cope with more content. And even better, we should get even more enjoyment out of the fact that there is more content, as long as we have filters that pick out the most relevant piece of content at the right time and place.

I have done my Martin Lewis full Money Makeover (I recommend it – may sound dull, but if you follow his instructions, it’s the easiest and quickest way to give yourself the equivalent of a 25% pay increase) and it has made me more sensitive to finding the best price for everything I buy.

So, naturally, I have signed up to two online discount services with a view to continue the process of savings: GroupOn (uses the power of group buying to bring you offers for local goods and services) and Vouchercloud (high street and online time-based discount vouchers) redeemed via your iPhone and/or printable vouchers.

These two services are very different:

Groupon delivers massive savings on fairly specialist products and services: e.g. laser hair removal, sports massage therapy, food allergy consultation as well as local restaurants. The catch is that you can only get the saving (which in many cases is substantial) if enough people sign up for the offer. Groupon is very much a push service – once they have your details they keep on pushing emails to you every day in the hope that one of their offers will resonate.

Vouchercloud is much more of a search engine for local offers that covers shopping (mainly for chain stores) and outings (museums, cinema, restaurants). You find the offer, you print the voucher and you use it. There is typically a use by date for the offer, but you don’t have to wait for 20 other to sign up for it before you can get the saving. This is more of a pull service – i.e. you have to remember to check out the app or site before heading out on your shopping spree of your annual trip to Alton Towers.

Over the last 3 months I have to say that the only savings I have achieved on my day-to-day spending is through Vouchercloud – a 30% discount voucher at the Gap for a Christmas present.

During that period Groupon have emailed me every day with offers, but even though the offers are always financially interesting (60% off spinal reflex healing) they have never ever been relevant to me. Yet, having just looked at all of the emails from them in my trashcan, I can spot a few offers that would be relevant to me now, but sadly the offers have run out…

My conclusion is that right now, the best way to continue saving is to scour the likes of Vouchercloud every time you plan to shop/go out as you may well find vouchers. In terms of Groupon, while they continue to use fairly basic information about me (mainly that I live near Bath) to target offers, their emails aren’t that different to spam.

However, I can see that if they could convince me to part with more information that would enable them to filter and target their offers – we could both win: me with a relevant offer for something I want and them with a much higher click through and conversion rate.