Wednesday evening saw some of the good people we collect (as Adriana puts it) descend on us for an evening of blogtalk, good food, copious amounts of wine, and - as always - plenty of emergent value that we could not have predicted would come from the evening before it happened.

Rocking up to tBBC HQ for the night were Alan Moore of SMLXL, Kate Whalley and Adrian Bailey of PeopleFanClub (yes, you have read about them here before), as well as tBBC tech maestro Dominic and his girlfriend Clara Zermani, a very clued-up communications scientist (yes, really) from Italy.

Rest assured that blogging was only one topic of conversation for the evening - we do know how to talk frivolity. (That said, at the point when we were all laughing at Johari Window jokes - "Alan, thank you for sharing your love of Marilyn Monroe-emblazoned accessories with the group. That was a bit of information that used to reside in your facade, but is now in the arena. This may not be an entirely good thing." - one had to wonder at our sanity.)

Clara was telling us that she is interested in customer-focused brands. She reads the SMLXL blog, so she has probably read Alan's recent post on how customers use brands, not the other way around. You should, too.

Companies need to recognise that the value of their product or service is increasingly in the role it plays in consumers' lives. It is in the every day that real value is found.

Companies that are information rich have an asset which they can offer to their customers in more meaningful ways. Be that retailers, financial services, travel companies, media etc. It is more of a question of sitting down and thinking through what this value is that can surround a product or a service. Tesco's is a good example of a company that has worked at unlocking and creating value to the benefit of its customers & shareholders. For example: 72% of all UK expectant mothers sign up to Tesco's baby club.

Alan Moore is exactly right in what he says about brands finding their everyday value to customers and using it to benefit them and shareholders. Engage by making yourself truly useful, instead of enraging by making yourself truly intrusive. Exchange value for value and let everyone reap the rewards.

That is kind of what we try to do at these dinners and parties, and considering that people keep coming back, we must be doing something right. (The wine helps, I suspect.)

Friday the 13th saw a "lucky charms" party at tBBC HQ. It was a rainy London night, which put the kibosh on plans to eat dinner outside, but most of the conversation seemed to be centred around the bar anyway. Below, tBBC's Adriana Cronin-Lukas, journalist Jessica Twentyman, and the ASI's Dr Eamonn Butler, who graced us with his presence before flying out to Salt Lake City to make a speech. Also visible is the headless torso of tBBC codemonkey Dominic, who really does have a noggin in real life - honest.

One of the nicest things I heard all evening came from Monica White, who told me that being infected with tBBC's ideas on the commercial applications for blogs had her seeing potential business blogs wherever she went. "So it's like The Sixth Sense," I replied. "Instead of 'I see dead people," it's 'I see blogs'." The good news for us is that as we feed Monica our ideas and she feeds us hers, even more value emerges from the conversation. Not surprising, but gratifying all the same.

Tonight the Big Blog Company will be attending en-mass a seminar about blogging being hosted at the Houses of Parliament in London.

It will be interesting to meet fellow members of the Blogerati in such a different context.

In case some of the people attending did not get the message, the time has been changed to slightly later (now 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm), and the venue is now the Grand Committee Room in order accommodate the larger than expected demand for seats. Entry as before will be via St Stephens Entrance, Houses of Parliament

Yesterday I spent a very pleasant afternoon giving a talk at Liverpool's rather swanky new downtown FACT (Film, Art & Creative Technology) centre, telling some media savvy folks all about this 'blogging thing' they have been reading about in the newspapers lately.

Many of the people there quickly saw how this new way of communicating ideas via the Internet could have applications to their specific areas of interest and it is always fascinating to me to see how adaptable the medium is to such disparate fields.