I'm so excited!

There are only a few people in the world that can get me out of bed before 7 in the morning, but Steve Moore is definitely one of them.

Steve is the director of Policy UnPlugged, he's a great guy, who really defines the meaning of a connector and he is one of the friendliest, most genuine people, I have ever come across. Anyway more about him another time, the point is that Steve sent me an invite to the launch of a new monthly breakfast event called One Morning, and I shifted myself out of bed and went along.

The premise of One Morning is that each month three individuals are given ten minutes to answer one question, fill the room with ideas and then take questions from the floor. Then there's some intense networking over breakfast and by 10.15 you are on your way back to your office, desk or laptop!

The launch question was: What happens next? (a question that I ask myself continually) and the speakers were Kevin Anderson, Blogs Editor at The Guardian, Jeremy Ettinghausen Head of Digital Publishing at Penguin and Matt Locke a Commissioning Editor for education at Channel 4.

I was drawn in from the start as I listened to Jeremy talk about the future of publishing, the promise of the first E-book and a vision of a 'book' for the future that you can listen to on your ipod, then plug into your car on your drive into work and then continue reading on line at the office. Wow!

I was intrigued by Kevin's contribution on the so-called death of newspapers, how to find the perfect online business model, citing Tech Crunch as a prime example, and how and why more and more companies are spending their advertising budget online; (great news for Precious) and I was really impressed with Matt's contribution that covered art, how young people use tools such as MSN and how it all fits in to the future of social media.

The event took me back to when I was working in the ITN New Media department about 10years ago, when the web was relatively new in the UK. I was part of a young team, who were very passionate about our work, and who were driven by being part of some truly innovative stuff. They were challenging and interesting times. We were stick in a back office, spoken of disparagingly by some of our colleagues, (I remember the ITN Royal correspondent wandering into our office muttering "What is the point of this Internet stuff anyway?") But we didn't care, we knew we were involved in something fresh, new, and exciting and as soon as everyone else in the company caught on, they would be as passionate about the web as we were...heady days indeed.

One Morning reminded me of that feeling of excitement and newness, and so, for that reason, I'll be a regular from now on