Last night I went to the HuffPost UK launch. In case you don't know, The HuffPost is a popular news site in the US, covering everything from politics to fashion to family life. Their model is to have "influential and knowledgeable minds" contribute posts to a blog style store front. The amazing thing is that people like Sarah Brown, Alastair Campbell and Ricky Gervais, all contribute. For free.
I've been asked to be a contributor, and honestly I've never been so excited to do something for nothing.
The main feature of the launch at Millbank Tower was this bizarre panel that included Richard Bacon, Alastair Campbell, Celia Walden, Kelly Osbourne and Arianna Huffington, the brains behind the HuffPost. They talked about current events, mainly phone hacking and super injunctions. It was very Question Time confrontational, and sort of entertaining, but the highlight was the cool Twitter stream that was projected on the big screen behind the panel.
We were invited to ask questions and share thoughts using #huffpostuk. Lots of witty things were going up, showing the intellectual capacity of the crowd. It reminded me a bit of Uni, where students would one-up their peers piping up with something like "when Sir Robert Walpole was Prime Minster in 1676..." Anyway, my tweets were not witty. I wanted to know where Arianna got the fab blouse she was wearing.
This one, embarrassingly, got a few chuckles from the audience.
I was pleased when Arianna answered the question on Twitter.
I immediately googled Dominco Vacca, turns out he's an Italian designer. There are no prices on the web site, so if I keep writing for free I most likely won't be purchasing anything from his collections soon :D
I was very impressed with Arianna, she is truly enchanting, taking the time to work the crowd. She came by and said hello, and I introduced myself as the one who asked about her blouse. She laughed, and told me Vacca was one of her favourite designers. The only thing I could think of to say was to show of my limited multi-lingual knowledge and tell her that vacca meant cow in Spanish.
Oh well.
Here's to reading A Modern Mother on the Huffington Post UK!
