We now have a concrete date and venue set for the first Network of Networks event. We announced this publicly on Friday 10th of October at the Social Media Cafe in London and following a discussion a week later the event will now be called AMPLIFIED 08.

The event will bring together a number of Creative and Social Media networks in a series of unconferences. The first is now set for November 27th and will be funded by NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) running from 4pm until 8pm at Nesta’s London offices. This mean we will have room for around 200 people at the inaugural event.

The aim is to run quarterly events not only in London but other cities and towns too. This will build towards a national conference in 2010 and form a natural extension of NESTA’s InnovationEdge. They started 3 years ago with 150 attendees, they closed the doors this May on 3,000 attendees, with a further 8,000 attending lead-up events. Our event will concentrate on Creative and Social Media practitioners and add a Fringe element to accommodate more cutting edge debate. We’ll have a larger follow up event in January and further events leading to the national one in 2010. We have the full support and blessing of NESTA who are keen to see what we come up with.

We’re aiming to build a coherent picture of the creative landscape and the impact of social networks. We are also trying to answer the question ‘what works, what doesn’t, what next’ for Social Media and the creative industries. We’re doing this by bringing together key networked individuals and practitioners in an unconference style setting to discuss how best to pull our disparate networks together to achieve tangible results. This is not an opportunity to give presentations or broadcast, but rather enter into discussion on a level playing ground.

These are not simply stand alone events, but rather each will build upon the previous one so that we get the biggest impact possible in 2010 when the event will have national if not international focus.

This has come together really quickly so we don’t have sign up procedures in place yet, but that is in the works. We’ve just set up a Basecamp to manage the first event, a wiki for more general discussion and brainstorming is on the way and now we have this blog.

We’ll be improving the model as we go and of course adding everyone’s input to the project.

The more questions and opinions at this stage the better so please feel free to get in touch.

Note: Everything below this post was imported from the first stab at a Network of Networks blog. We mothballed that until we had a date and venue set, but now we have both (and a new name) it seemed apt to drag that content here.

If you read nothing else below this post do try and find the time to listen to Penny’s podcast interviews. Focusing on the individuals involved is the best way to to show the strength of a network of networks