A huge, huuuuge thank you to everyone who came to 'Welcome to copywriting'. If you weren't there, here's what you missed. If you were there but are still hungover (yeah Bank Holiday weekend!), here's what you may have forgotten already.
In fact, for those of you who have no idea what I'm on about, I'll go back to the start.
'Welcome to copywriting' was a free day of talks organised by me and 3 other copywriters. It was aimed squarely at new and junior copywriters, including those 'new' to freelancing. We didn't claim to know everything about copywriting life, but aimed to be as helpful as possible.
(Check out the #copywelcome hashtag to see everything and follow new friends. If I used your photo and you'd like to be credited, please tweet me.)
We held 'Welcome to copywriting' at The Rag Factory in Shoreditch. Great location, lovely people. They did, however, neglect to mention to us that there'd be a Tatty Devine sample sale happening on the same day. So we arrived to discover a massive queue outside. Surely all those people weren't there to see us? Of course they weren't. Ha. Silly us.
With chairs in place and the 'a bit shit' projector up and running, it was time to welcome everyone to 'Welcome to copywriting'. We did have to send Chloe out to check nobody from our lot had joined the Tatty Devine queue by accident. She found 5 people...
An almost full house! Including a copybaby, who has clearly been destined for this career since before birth. The pressure was on to be interesting. Of course, we are already interesting, but mostly in the 'unusual tweets' sense. Or the 'what the hell are you wearing?' sense.
Whenever you need to hear brutal honesty, you ask David. His account of the ups and downs of finding and keeping a job pulled no punches. The truth and nothing but. Everyone wants this man's cover letter! That can't be bad.
I feel bad for doing the only non-personal, non-copywriting-focused presentation of the day. But I am determined not to let any of you do naff, gimmicky job applications. So there. Some stand-up comedy may have leaked into my talks entirely by accident.
Honor makes admitting you're socially awkward look like you haven't been awkward for even a second of your life. She is literally the queen of the fucking world and she made us all look woefully incompetent. The kick in the pants many of us needed.
And Chloe wins for providing the highest amount of detail. There is very little she doesn't know about small agency life and keeping HMRC on a tight leash. Her more in-depth talks made my 15-minute presentation look like a speed run.
We got so into our discussions that we ran an hour and 20 minutes over schedule. A few folks had to leave before we were done. Sorry! By the time I finally got home, my Mum remarked that I sounded like a bag of gravel...
After wrapping up the talks, we said our goodbyes and several people (including me) decamped to a little pub across the road. It might well be the only pub in Shoreditch that doesn't sell prosecco. We were not amused. Clinking glasses with pints of cider makes more of a 'thud'.
And seeing as The Rag Factory is just off Brick Lane, a celebratory Saturday night curry was in order. Honor and I made David negotiate for free food and drinks, and he didn't let us down.
To have so many people come up to us afterwards and say how much they enjoyed their day was lovely. Especially as they were willing to spend an entire beautiful sunny Saturday indoors listening to other people talk. Again, thank you all for joining us.