Second London OpenCoffee Club keeps buzzing

Thanks to everyone who came along to our second OpenCoffee Club last Thursday. Once again we blew away Starbucks' daily numbers (we were over 6x their normal revenues).

We had another great turnout with an eclectic crowd of entrepreneurs, investors, developers and marketers, plus London's startup movers and shakers including Robert, Sam and Judith.

What really stood out for me this week was the feeling of people clustering into short meetings and really getting work done. OpenCoffee is deliberately during the day to encourage real professional networking rather than social networking - so the vibe of people getting things done and making connections is really excellent.

For entrepreneurs looking for feedback or advice on funding, again there was a great turnout from investors with Nic (Espirit), Avid (Accel), Greg & Danny (Index), Steve (DN Capital), Robin (TAG) and John (Folio) all coming along. New and very welcome this week were Adam (Arts Alliance) and Mark from Venrex who have invested in Smythsons and Astley Clarke.

There are some really interesting young entrepreneurs around London at the moment and this week Douglas (Extate), Ivailo (Zoomf), Immad (Revmap), Anthony (ParkatmyHouse), and Sumon (Jobably), Damien (New Bamboo) and Gareth (Technovate) were some of the folks around.

Two companies starting to generate significant buzz were there as well.

The first is an old timer: GNR, the folks behind .name are riding an enormous wave right now as Microsoft, AOL, Symantec, Digg & Netvibes pile into OpenID. The issue of digital identity is back to being front and centre again and Geir & Hakon are a great position.

The second is new: Imagini, which is currently one of the fastest growing UK web properties and who's Friend's service made the most popular story on Digg in the last 24 hours.

Next week sees more OpenCoffee including Palo Alto, Paris and Amsterdam. Sacramento, Dublin, Brighton and Zagreb are also on their way with conversations happening at the moment to look at setting things up in Hamburg, Tel Aviv and Stockholm.

OpenCoffee is easy to do - and whether there are 5 people or 50, it's all good - so make it happen locally wherever you are and push your local investors, entrepreneurs and developers to come along.

The wiki is on its way - it should debut next week. Please keep sending me feedback and comments so we can keep the momentum going.