All the team are working away on different bits to make sure that Saturday is a huge success. We will have wireless connections in the venue for you to use, but due to the complexity of academic networks we will be using 3G routers throughout the building, so if you have your own mobile broadband you may wish to bring that with you.  If you do use our connections please play nice and don’t start streaming movies!   We will have a couple of cat5 connections for people who are presenting or running sessions to plug in to.

As Will has said previously, we are pretty awe struck with the names that have appeared on our delegate list. We have some of the best bloggers and social media people around turning up.   There is one ‘very’ special delegate, Andrew Stott who has signed up to come along and has offered to give a talk on data.gov.uk to say there was a certain amount of jaw dropping when we saw Andrew had signed up would be an under statement!

We have had an excellent response from sponsors and supporters who we would like to say a big thank you to (in no particular order):

Screen WM
OFCOM
Cisco
UK online centres
Business Link WM
4iP
Media Trust
Advantage West Midlands

For making the event possible.

We  have shwag for you, we have pads, pens, mouse mats (does anyone still use them?) mugs, a free copy of The Sentinel courtesy of Mike Sassi.    Interestingly we will be having a competition to win a serious prize provided by Media Trust as part of the Festival of Learning.  Nicky is busily working away at some questions for you to win a blog make over.

The prize will include, a trip to Talk About Local offices in Fazeley, a make over for your blog by some of the best social media practitioners in the UK,  lunch and some other goodies.

We won’t be able to stream the event but there will be a number of social reporters covering the event and we ask that delegates use #tal09 as your tag to appear in these feeds:
- Twitter
- delicious

You can also add photos to the TAL Flickr group and join in longer conversations at the Google Group.

If you have any questions about the event, need to check anything or just want a chat then drop us a mail at info[@]talkaboutlocal.org and we’ll get back to you.

We look forward to meeting you all on Saturday morning, or on Friday night if any of you are getting there early.