#Business Expo London

[digitalageexpo]

Unlock The Power: 6 Secret Techniques for Mastering Virtual Conference London

Mastering the world of virtual conferences in London can be a game-changer for businesses and individuals alike. By implementing some secret techniques, you can take your virtual conference experience to the next level. Let's dive in and discover six expert strategies that will help you improve Virtual Conference London.

1. Optimize Your Tech Setup

Ensuring a seamless virtual conference experience starts with your tech setup. Make sure your internet connection is stable, your audio and video quality is clear, and your devices are up-to-date. Investing in high-quality equipment can make a significant difference in how you present yourself during the conference.

2. Engage with Interactive Features

Virtual conferences offer a range of interactive features to engage participants. Take advantage of features like live polls, Q&A sessions, and breakout rooms to keep attendees actively involved. By leveraging these interactive elements, you can create a dynamic and engaging conference environment.

3. Craft Compelling Content

Content is king, even in the virtual conference realm. Tailor your presentations to be informative, engaging, and visually appealing. Use a mix of multimedia elements, such as videos, slides, and infographics, to convey your message effectively. Remember, compelling content is more likely to resonate with your audience.

4. Foster Networking Opportunities

One of the key aspects of a successful virtual conference London is networking. Encourage attendees to connect with each other through virtual networking sessions or social media groups. By fostering networking opportunities, you can create a sense of community and collaboration among participants.

5. Embrace Innovation

To stand out in the world of virtual conferences, embrace innovation and creativity. Experiment with new formats, technologies, and presentation styles to keep your audience engaged. Think outside the box and don't be afraid to try new approaches to make your conference memorable.

6. Evaluate and Improve

After the virtual conference is over, take the time to evaluate its success. Gather feedback from participants, analyze metrics, and identify areas for improvement. Use this information to refine your approach and make future conferences even better.

In conclusion, mastering Virtual Conference London is within reach by applying these six secret techniques. By optimizing your tech setup, engaging with interactive features, crafting compelling content, fostering networking opportunities, embracing innovation, and evaluating your performance, you can elevate your virtual conference experience to new heights. So go ahead, unlock the power of these techniques and watch your virtual conference thrive. Visit more information for your website

[immaculatasknight]

Pre-crime has arrived in London

[a-b-riddle]

Part Six

Can't stop thinking about reader finally giving the boys a taste of their own medicine. And hurting my own feelings in the process of it all. I wanted to make this a baddie reader chapter, but its just a saddie reader chapter. I played Down Bad by T.S on repeat while writing this. Y'all need to thank @blueladys-world for being my ventor for this part.

None of them came the next day to pick up the box of everything you had collected. By everything, quite literally everything. Birthday cards and gifts. Keepsakes from your time together they had given you. Even going as far as returning lingerie they had given you. You didn't want any trace of them in your home anymore. You were gonna have to work hard in rebuilding it to be your safe space once again.

You were surprised that someone from the expo had DM'd you. Renée was an author who had tried to stop by to your stand, but got too caught up in the day. She was in London, working on her next series installment and wanted to pick your brain. Writer to writer.

The two of you agreed on a time. She had mentioned wanting to try this restaurant the last time she visited and you already knew you would be putting that meal on a credit card. It was a bit of splurge, but after the past week you deserved it. You could even wear that sexy black number that had been collecting dust in your closet.

By the time you were done getting ready and squeezing into your dress, you looked more ready for a date than dinner with a colleague.

A colleague. You had a colleague!!!

The knock on the door pulled you from your girlish glee. You didn't need to guess who it was. Your friends knew to text you before they came over and Renée had agreed just to meet you at the restaurant.

It was one of them.

You didn't even t bother looking through your peephole before you opened the door to find Johnny standing there with a floral arrangement of your favorite flowers.

Johnny began to speak, afraid you were going to shut him down immediately no less. But no words came out. His eyes traveled up and down your body, taking you in.

A vision.

You wanted to snap at him that your eyes weren't located on your hips. But damn if it didn’t feel empowering seeing Johnny’s gaze gloss over.

"Fuck me." He swore, gathering his bearings before realizing you were dressed. In a sexy black dress and heels and makeup and oh, fuck you were going out. "Where are you going?"

"First off, none of your business," you said holding a finger up. "And secondly, what are you doing here?"

"Listen," "Bon-"

"The box is right there." You said pointing to a large cardboard box on the floor. "That's everything."

"If you just let me make it-"

"Up to me?" You cut him off again. "I'm over it. Really."

"Just give me a chance."

"Either you haven't spoken to the other two to know I am well and truly done with this situationship, or you’re hoping some half-ass apology and flowers will let you get a last fuck in and the skedaddle. So hopefully if it was latter, hopefully the former answered that for ya.”

So if that's all you came here for, I've got to get going. My reservation is at seven and it's rude to keep a friend waiting."

"It's been a week and you're already going on a date?" He accused.

"Who said anything about a date?" You didn't outright say it wasn't. Where would be the fun in that? “It's just dinner with a colleague.” You didn’t want to lie. It wasn’t a date. But you didn’t need to say it was a woman. “Hardly a date.”

“Look at the sight of ye!" He said, taking the opportunity to take a quick look at how deliciously your ass filled that dress. “A fookin’ dinner with a colleague. Like one of us would show up to a briefing like that.” You opened your compact. Not needed in the age of cellphones but loving the feminine touch.

There was something so... seductive about using a compact mirror to apply your lipstick.

“Kyle does have the legs for this dress.” You said, applying that lipstick he loves. That same shade that looked beautiful on your lips. The same lipstick you would mark all over Johnny’s body. “Believe what you want. Not my problem anymore.”

You put your compact back in your purse along with the lipstick in case you needed to reapply it after dinner.

Johnny's eyes zeroed in on your lips before his eyes met yours. That's when you felt it again. That undeniably spark of chemistry that you had with him. With all of them. That feeling that sucked the very breath from your lungs and for a moment all you could see was the man in front of you.

"Bonnie," he said placing his hands on your neck. His thumbs stroking your cheeks softly. "Just one more chance." He begged, his voice breaking. "I'm a fucking git, but I won't let you go again. I won't leave." You knew that when it came to promises, Johnny had proven that even if he didn't mean to break them, he had forgotten he made them in the first place.

But in that moment you didn't care. Even after everything, Meredith was right. You had loved them. Everything else had ended so shitty. John had blamed you. Kyle had only shown up until it was too late. And Simon. The last time you would ever hear his voice was after he said such cruel things to you.

No.

If you were done with Johnny, you won't let the last time he fucked you being a quick, rough fuck doggystyle before leaving you naked and alone in your bed.

No. The last time with Johnny needed to be good. It might make it harder to finally leave, but you needed this. You needed to know that he could still make love to you and not just fuck you like an animal in heat.

"Johnny?" You asked. Your mouth dangerously close to his. "I don't want you to fuck me."

"I don't have to," he said, starting to take a step back to give you some space before your hands reached his. Holding him in place.

He can't let you go. You couldn't let him go. Not yet. Just one more. You needed just one more time to get him out of your system. The closure you needed.

"Make love to me." You begged, your eyes pleading. "I need to know that I wasn't just something you wanted to fuck." You don't move as his eyes search yours, looking for reassurance. When you nod, his mouth softly touches your own.

His hands travel along your body, but never fully leave you. Sliding your neck to your back. Pulling your body closer to his. A hand placed on your hip so tightly he's afraid you might disappear.

There's no rush, no haste in his touch. His mouth not eager to devour you.

He's slow. With his hands, his tongue. Even when he picks you up and walks to your bedroom with your legs around his waist.

He doesn't throw you on the bed.

Not this time.

He lays you down. His body laying on top of yours. His hand skimming along your bare thighs, but not daring to travel any higher.

But damn you needed him. You wanted love making, but if he didn't get inside you soon, you weren't sure you could let him go after this. You weren't sure you would be able to leave.

"Johnny," you whimpered, pulling away from his mouth. "Please." You took his hand, putting it between your thigh. Aching for any friction.

He obeyed without hesitation. If you told him to get on his bark, he would in that moment. Anything to make you happy. Anything to keep you.

"Got to get you out of this dress first." He resting on his knees before he began to slide the black satin from your thighs to your stomach. You maneuvered, helping him undress you leaving you in nothing.

"I thought you liked the dress." You couldn't help, but tease. Your hand finding its home on the back of his neck, pulling you to him once more.

In a tone lacking any note of humor and in all seriousness, he looked at you. Really looking at you. Taking in how your smile reached your beautiful eyes before he said, "I want you bare to me when I take you."

You felt your stomach flutter at his words before he began to take off his clothes.

He joined you again. His body relaxing when they got between your legs again. His mouth traveled from your exposed neck to your nipples. Sucking and flicking them with his tongue until your back arched. Pressing harder into his mouth.

Your hands tangled in his soft brown hair before you boldly guided him to your already dripping core. He slid down your body before his hands began to push your knees apart until you were fully expose to him.

With your knees bent, Johnny settled on his stomach, placing soft kisses on your soft inner thighs. God, did he love seeing you squirm. He smiled at your tortured expression before looking down at your sex. "There she is." He said before placing a kiss on your pussy.

It wasn't sloppy. He wasn't diving in and licking at your center like so many times before. He was kissing it just as tenderly as he kissed your mouth. Slowly building it deeper and deeper. Adding tongue. Breaking away to readjust his head.

The delicious ache between your thighs began to become to unbearable. "Need you inside me." You panted. "Johnny-"

"Shhh." He soothed. "Got to warm you up first , Bonnie." He said before slipping his finger inside of you. One was all it took before your head settled against the pillows again. When your body relaxed, he added another. He would need to add three to make sure you were good and ready.

His digits stroked that spongy spot inside of you that made your toes curl. "You're barely fitting around my fingers." Johnny was a good 6 inches in length, but the girth is what always did you in. It hurt to take anything past his head into your mouth. If you fucked him without any preparation, especially after a week of no sex, he would tear you into too.

His tongue caressed your clit, your eyes squeezing shut as you felt your first orgasm creeping up on you.

"Johnny." You moaned, your fingers running through his soft brown hair.

"Give it to me, beauty." He panted. "Come on my face. Squeeze my fingers, Lass." He begged before his mouth went back to you.

It was like lightning. Your body now sensitive after being forsaken for so long. Your vision blurred and before you could process it, Johnny was sitting on his haunches between your legs, stroking his cock.

You could only nod, dazed and barely keeping a grip onto the reality of what this was.

The end.

He leaned forward, his cock nestling against you. You knew this was going to be nothing compared to his fingers. "Tell me if I need to stop."

You smiled, mockingly. Reminding him, "Not our first time together, Johnny." just our last.

"You were wrapped tight around my fingers." He gave a half smile before kissing your forehead. The gesture like a knife twisting in your heart. "I just don't want to hurt you."

"I'm ready." You brought your legs around his waist again. Pulling him to you, your arms wrapping around his neck as your mouths meet.

He presses into you. The head of his cock sliding inside just one or two inches. You body contracting around him in a small spasm. He swallows your moan and lets you adjust. He pulls away before looking down where the two of you meet.

"I could die like this, Lass." He said, his breath coming out unsteady as he tries his best to control himself. So close to just burying himself inside of you to the fucking hilt. "Seeing you like this is this first thing I want to see when I make it to the other side." You let out a choked cry as he pushes deeper inside you. Another inch. And another. And another until you're taking all of him.

He slurs something that sound like "fuck", but you are in too much of a daze to care. You arch into him, trying to get closer.

His thrusts are slow and deep. His pubic bone brushing against your clit making you whine and squirm. Begging for more.

You're not sure how long he had fucked you like that.

You needed it to stop.

You couldn't handle it. The softness. His words.

I could die like this, Lass.

Your lip quivered as you told him you wanted to be on top. You needed a moment. A chance to create a bit of space before he shattered your world yet again.

He pulled out. His absence already making you ache for him again before he settled beside you.

You squatted above his cock. Your feet flat against the mattress as you grabbed his hardness and slipping it inside of you. The sound you let out was pornographic. A high pitched, soft moan slipping from your lips as he buried himself inside of you again.

You placed you hands on his chest. Using the leverage to ride him. Your arms serving as barrier for you to get your bearings.

You used his body just as he had used yours. Throwing your head back, you moved faster and faster. Readjusting so your hands went from his chest to his stomach, giving him a better view of your connecting bodies.

His hand slips between the two of you, thumb pressing against your clit, and you tighten even more around. A needy whimper coming out of your throat. The sound mixing in with the sounds of his labored breathing and slapping skin as he begins to fuck up into you.

Even though he had been doing all the work for the last several minutes, you felt the tension start to creep into your calf.

"Fuck fuck fuck." You screech, barely able to hold yourself up any longer. "Ow." You hissed as the cramp took hold.

"Leg cramp?" He asked, not even faltering in his thrusts. You pathetically nod before he takes it upon himself to flip you on your back again.

"I'm going to do this every chance I can." He promises, pressing a searing kiss onto your exposed neck. "Any chance you'll give me." You can't take it. His words, his mouth, his fucking cock. It's too much. "I'm going to show you how much I want you. How much I want to fucking worship ye. Do anything to make you feel good. Not going to leave you again like that, Bonnie."

You reach for him again, pull him into a searing kiss just to shut him up. You need him to shut up. You couldn't take his false promises. You wouldn't survive it. Couldn't.

"Shit." His thrusts quicken, his thumb returning to your swollen bud. Flicking it in a way he had crafted into an art. He buries his face into your neck and you know he's getting close.

You weren't too far behind.

He didn't want to come, not yet, but this was fully out of his control. It was pathetic. A week without sex and you had him nearly coming in the first ten minutes.

But that's what you want. To see him lost in the idea that you would stay.

"Johnny." You groan out. "Please. Cum inside me."

He draws fast, beautiful circles around your clit that immediately push you over the edge. You shut your eyes tight, squeezing him like a vice as you come in strong waves, continuing to push inside you.

in out in out in out.

Deliciously clenching around him tighter and tighter until he can't take it anymore.

"Fuck," he says again, and you see it in his face, and you see it in his face, the second it's all over for him. You want to sear the image in your head. Keep it there forever. Knowing you'll never see it again. The way those enchanting blue eyes squint nearly shut before closing in complete ecstacy.

His mouth would open. A moan caught in his throat that he isn't ready to let go.

His hand closes around your hip, holding you to him while he presses as far as he can go, and it's only then do you feel his cock twitch in quick, jerky movements. He moans out your name before taking your mouth into a searing kiss.

"I fucking love you." He says. "So fucking much."

He was still under the blanket when you returned from the bathroom. You picked up your clothes up from the floor. Looking at the clock realizing you had less than five minutes to get out the door before you would be late for dinner.

"What are you doing?" he asked. You couldn't look at him. Hearing the panic in his voice almost made you stop. Tell him it really was just dinner with a colleague. A woman. That you would be back. Beg him to wait until you came home.

"I can't cancel on the dinner." You said slipping your feet into your heels. "This was a mistake."

You weren't sure why you said it. You weren't sure if you were trying to convince him or yourself. If you wanted to hurt him or make him think you regretted it when you would truthfully do it again. You would do it again and again. You would never stop.

Like Johnny, you could have died in that moment, but for a completely different. Where he would be content, you would be saved from the pain. The pain currently coursing throughout your very soul.

"Lock the door behind you." You say as you practically sprint out the bedroom. Only slowing in your stride to snatch your purse off the kitchen counter before running out. The door slamming behind you.

The restaurant was nicer than you expected. The wine alone was the price of an entree. You didn't seem to be phased at all and were relieved when Renée insisted on picking up the bill.

Your dinner had been delicious and the conversation even better. Renée wrote fantasy romance and wanted to pick your brain about a Why Choose. You had nearly spent out the over priced wine you weren't even really enjoying. Oh the irony.

"It's like all the rage now, but it's hard to make more than one appealing as the love interest. You should have seen the Goodreads comments on my last book. So many people bitched about my FMC not ending up with a character who was quite literally her adopted brother."

"So," you took a breath trying to find the words. "I'm going to be honest. I only read your latest book and I loved Luka. But I can't compare him to other MMCs you've written about so I don't know if they are similar or different. But what I can say is that I'm seeing like this trend of MMCs where they are all this dark-haired, brooding or mysterious character who dislikes mostly everyone and is only soft for either a select few or only the FMC."

"I think if you are going to write a Why Choose you need to think of guys you wouldn't mind falling in love with." You couldn't help, but think of what drew you to your boys. "One could be the leader. Someone who isn't afraid to have his neck on the line. To make sure everyone else is taken care of and being strong enough to handle the stress of that. He would be big on words of affirmation. Lifting the FMC up. For me, it would be someone that I know will take care of business. He's confident in his decision. That confidence would extend to me." You clear your throat. "If I was the FMC, that is."

"Okay." She nodded, pulling out a pen and notepad. "You don't mind if I-"

"I don't write about polygamy." Crossed that bridge. Currently trying to burn it. "So feel free."

"Another could be the one who it's so easy to fall in love with their charm. The one who falls to his knees. Wanting to worship every inch of her. The one who makes her laugh. That one to make her forget about the sadness that creeps into her bones. The one to hold her whenever he could. He's about quality time and physical touch."

"So different love languages." She said, her pen quickly scribbling.

"Yeah." You said, leaning forward. "Then there is the gift giver." Your mind went to Gaz. Most of the gifts and trinkets in the box sitting by your door had came from him. He had gotten you new earbuds when yours broke. When you were being harassed at your gym, he had bought you and him a membership at a different one. "The one who would give her the world if she asked for it. If you're going with a high fantasy then maybe the one to take note of something at a market that the FMC had been eyeing and he bought it for her. Just someone who takes notice like that."

"So acts of service would fall with all of them then you think?"

No. Simon had been the one who probably spent the least amount of money on you. He didn't praise you like John. He didn't even try to attach himself at your hip like Johnny.

But if you needed something fixed, he would come fix it himself. He'd be damned letting a strange man into your apartment. And alone? Fucking forget about it. The one who hated any sort of cardio activity outside of fucking you, but didn't hesitate in attempting to keep up with you when you wanted to go on a run and get some fresh air. If you needed something done, he didn't pay someone else to do it. He did it. If you wanted to do something, he made it happen. He made you safe.

You couldn't bring yourself to say explain it. Your eyes begin to itch. Warning you to think of something else.

So instead you just told her yeah. That they would all commit acts of service. And even in your hypothetical explanation of characters that haven't even been written yet, Simon was still the ghost among them.

"Lucky fucking girl." Renée said setting down her pen.

"Yeah." You said, downing the rest of your wine.

You walked home. The cool crisp wind feeling like it was whipping your exposed skin. It was soothing as the ghost of Johnny's touch still seemed to burn you.

You had hoped that you would get some closure, but you just felt hollow. You came twice and still manage to leave unsatisfied. Johnny wasn't malicious... he was Johnny. He wasn't like the others. Simon would never apologize and John and Kyle wouldn't try to keep reaching out after you told them know once.

Johnny couldn't stand you being mad at him. He never could. He would beg and beg for your forgiveness. You didn't regret fucking him one last time. He needed to know that you were well and truly done. There was no going back from this.

"Hey, Love!" You were pulled from your thoughts at the sound of a voice coming from a source you couldn't see. You perked up, quickly scanning the dimly lit street before your eyes settled on a cluster of shadows just across the street. "Yeah." The slurring voice said again. "Talking to you gorgeous!"

You resumed your trek home. Now picking up your pace. "Don't be like that! Where ya off to?" The voice followed you. You kept your gaze straight. You were three minutes away. Three minutes and you would be at your building.

Three minutes.

Three minutes.

"What's the rush?" Another voice joined the cacophony. "Just want to have a chat."

You turned. They were maybe twenty feet away. You kept your eyes glued to them as your started to make a run for it.

You had made it about ten feet before your body collided with someone. Firm hands gripped your upper arms, steading you as you threatened to fall back.

You sucked in a breath of air, ready to scream when you looked up. It was too dark to make out the man's facial features. He was tall. His head eclipsing the street lamp just behind him. You shook beneath his hands. The voices behind you now silent.

"Keep walking." You didn't need to see his face. You knew that deep timber voice anywhere. He released you from his grip before letting you pass him.

"Just wanted to have a chat." You heard one of them try to reason. "No harm done."

"No harm done yet." Was the last thing you heard Simon say before you broke out into a full fledged run.

[bapouro]

in relation to the business expo thing. afterwards that day before the train back me and a friend at the expo went to a gallery viewing we found on instagram of this guy who did album art for a famous band.. the uber kept getting further and further out of central london... passed a river. we realised the viewing was just this guys house. we also realised it was like a cheese and wine party with his london fine art world friends much older than us. he talked to us in the viewing room upstairs for about an hour and was quite nice and encouraging. we were shitting ourselves. when he left we turned to each other and were just like 'what the hell do we do now?'. we called an uber to the train station. felt like we stumbled on a world we were not meant to be in. just say yes i guess?

[alicenpai]

Hey Alice! Really random question but what cons happen in Toronto besides fan expo? (Specifically looking for June augest ones) I swear there’s more. I’m not sure who else to ask this or where to find con information haha. Alternatively do you know of con information in Vancouver canada? Thank you

hi! fellow torontonian spotted 🫡🫵

for large scale anime/gaming/geek cons in toronto, there's: - toronto comic con (march)* - toronto game expo (march) - anime north (may) - anime fiesta (july) - beware as i heard this one is not great for events but maybe they'll improve, smaller event - fan expo (aug)* - furnal equinox (march) - toronto game expo (nov) * good luck applying to these bc the rebooking rate is INSANE and you will also be out a $800 deposit for a whole year

yeah............. toronto has a huge population but as you can see there's really not much in the summer LMAO which is why these few cons are really important to us. and canadians opt to travel for cons during the mid summer season. americans have it good haha. here are some other popular ones: - g anime (jan, gatineau QC) - yeti con (june, blue mountain ON) - ai kon (july, winnipeg MB) - animethon (aug, edmonton AB) - otakuthon (aug, montreal QC) usually same weekend - the only out of province event i attend currently, i really like otakuthon and personally i did really well, but i have heard from others that the profits this year were not as good as last year. (keep in mind the small business culture is huge and competitive right now) - london comic con (sept, london ON) during off-peak season there are also a few markets (bamtori studio has been hosting them every few months and they're so goated!!!), there've been more buzz on markets in recent years as the small business scene boomed. personally i don't think my art suits markets demographic so i don't apply for them/ this post will not cover markets. vancouver events: - anime revolution (aug) usually same weekend as animethon and otakuthon. i have heard conflicting opinions on anirevo so please do your own research on this con. rebooking rate is crazy. - fan expo vancouver (feb) for any informa canada run events, be aware the rebooking rate is extremely high. - emerald city comic con (march) - forgive me for putting an american con here

if i had to travel to the west coast id pick emerald city comic con, i heard it's pretty good to travel out to (and the other ones id have no chance of getting in anyways) if anything i know about these events through hearsay and by googling ahaha. if a con is good then more artists will recommend them generally. you can also join artist alley network international (AANI, you can google them for the application to their discord). personally im not sure how long ill be doing cons as i've been putting off working on my animation portfolio for so long (animation is kind of grim rn so a lot of us have been relying on cons)... and im not sure if ill travel beyond montreal next year... but yeah... hope this helps!

[canmom]

Das Abenteuer der Canmom in Köln (zur Gamescom)

It's time for canmom to have another adventure! What will that wacky lil porygon do next?

[you may be wondering, whatever happened to the plan to transfer l'aventure de canmom à Annecy to the main site for easier reading? that's still planned to happen, hopefully pretty soon! I've just been very busy.]

So: I work for a small VR games company called Holonautic. I've been working for them for around four months now (time flies)! This week some of us were in Cologne, Germany, attending Gamescom. Until this trip I hadn't met any of them in person, and indeed only had a vague idea what they looked like, because the modern world is wacky that way.

What's Gamescom? It's a major industry expo where game devs show off their games to the public and journalists, and otherwise have various industrial sorts of chats. The event fills a massive convention centre (the Kölnmesse), similar to the Excel Centre in London. Thousands and thousands of gamers enter in massive queues, and once inside, they queue up some more to get a chance to play some work in progress games at massive display booths.

Or maybe they go to the indie room, where there are hundreds of tiny desks just wide enough for a dev to set up a computer with a demo... or the retro games area, where various old consoles were set up for people to play... or one of the zones set up for laser tag or something like that. There was a lot going on!

Even Cthulhu came down to check out the games.

My own experience of Gamescom involved very little of that. With my Trade Visitor badge I could skip the queues, but most of my time was spent in a corner of the Business Area demoing our game to influencers, other devs and members of Meta and Unity, and then heading out to restaurants to have dinner with other VR devs in the evening. I had a good time though! It was great to meet the rest of Holonautic in person, and get to see the sights of Köln a tiny bit. And it was a very rewarding feeling to see other people enjoy the game I'd been working so hard on.

So in this post I'm going to talk about my trip, do a bit of amateur sociology, think about the place of videogames in the world and all that - and also talk a little about how the game sausage gets made - at least as far as I can without breaking NDA. Sadly, the game I spent most of the weekend demonstrating remains under wraps, so I'll have to tell you about that another day. I didn't get to see a ton of games but I'll also talk about the handful of indies I did see!

This time I travelled by train (non-transport nerds, feel free to skip this paragraph), taking the Eurostar from St. Pancras to Brussels, and then the ICE 19 to Cologne. Although it was slower and a bit more expensive than flying, once you factor in the time it takes to travel out to the airport, and the security generally being much more straightforward, I think I much prefer the trains. I spent my journeys drawing other passengers (coming soon to @canmom-art) and reading Osamu Tezuka's manga Ayako (which will be its own post). It was all told very straightforward and comfortable.

[minutiae: I thought I was clever by getting an Interrail pass instead of just buying tickets the usual way, but I didn't realise that you also have to pay for seat reservations, so in the end the Interrail probably cost about as much for a 'there and back again' type of trip.]

By far the most expensive part of the trip was the hotel room. We stayed in a hotel pretty close to the centre of Cologne, but it turned out that its proximity to be about 15 minutes walk from public transport, so we didn't end up saving that much travel time. Since I ultimately spent almost no time in my hotel room, I think if I go next year, the call will be to stay at a hostel. But anyway, let's talk games.

How a game gets released on the Quest

So, Holonautic specialises in VR games. I wrote about our previous games in this very nerdy post, but in brief, there are broadly two major types of VR game: PC VR and standalone VR. For PC VR, the game runs on a computer, and the headset just contains a screen and something that can be tracked. For standalone VR, the headset is essentially a powerful Android smartphone with a custom OS; it uses the headset's cameras for tracking and does all the computing on the headset.

With the success of the Oculus/Meta Quest series, standalone VR became really, really popular - much more so than PCVR ever was. It makes sense: for native games you don't need a powerful gaming PC and there are no cables to trip over or expensive base stations, but you can still play PCVR games if you want to. Almost all of Holonautic's games are Quest-native.

For PCVR games, you can use one of various APIs, such as OpenXR, to wire up your game to VR tracking and input. Moreover, Valve built pretty good VR support into Steam, and since Steam is pretty much anything-goes, it's pretty easy to release a PCVR game in a way people can get it - but marketing is all on you, as with any Steam game.

The Quest is a different story. Compared to other consoles, Meta (which absorbed Oculus a few years ago) occupies a bit of a strange position in this industry, simultaneously the hardware manufacturer, the only publisher, and also a developer of first-party titles.

I don't have any good pictures for this part so here's me in a massive cathedral. Metaphors? No no. It's just a holiday photo...

There are two ways that games can get released on the Quest. There's the store, which is heavily curated: here, Meta acts as a publisher, releasing only games they think will sell, but they also put games through months of QA and handle all the marketing for you (i.e. putting it in front of people when they boot up the Quest). To get on the store, you basically need to have an in at Meta - there's a whole process, I'll talk about that in a moment. There's also 'App Lab', which is much less heavily vetted - but also it's a lot harder to get an audience on App Lab. If a game is particularly successful on App Lab, Meta may end up promoting it to the store. But a lot of games just languish there.

Of course, just because you have a liaison at Meta does not mean you have a free pass onto the store. There's a whole series of stages you have to go through: first you write up a detailed pitch, then if approved (based on what else may be in the works, Meta won't approve two overly similar games), you have a few months to make a 'Minimum Viable Product' prototype of your game and show it to Meta. I joined the company about a month before the MVP was due on our game.

Assuming your contact at Meta likes the MVP, you get a few more months to make a 'Vertical Slice', which is essentially a small portion of your game that's more or less complete. (For example, a single level.) Then, you show this to Meta again. If you make a good impression, they'll give you the go-ahead to finish the game and release it on the store.

Here's another random picture of Köln from the famous Hohenzollern Bridge. Are you saying this wall covered in padlocks is symbolic of something? Overactive imagination, I tell you.

So if yo uwere wondering, the last few weeks of intense work were all about making that vertical slice be as good as possible (and it got pretty clutch at the end). Since we were all going to be at Gamescom, we agreed with our guy at Meta that we'd demo the game in person.

The upshot of all this is that selling a VR game is heavily heavily shaped by Meta, and specifically the individual at Meta who makes the call. Holonautic has a longstanding contact with a laid-back American guy I'll call W.; he has in the past championed some of our games like Hand Physics Lab that left other Meta staff unconvinced. (As it turns out, W. was right and Hand Physics Lab was successful.) But he's not shy about saying that a game doesn't make the cut and should go to AppLab instead. Our game would live or die based on W.'s opinion.

But not just W.; Meta itself as an organisation is also looking for certain things, shaped by its internal politics. They have new features they want to tout - so if you can come up with a game that uses mixed reality, hand tracking and shared anchors that's probably going to count in your favour. And they have certain directions they are keen to push: sporty exercise games are in favour at the moment.

What does this mean for the evolution of the medium? Well, of course people will make the games they want to make, and just because Meta likes an idea doesn't mean it will sell. But Meta does have a lot of power to dictate the general direction of VR games - and if the Apple Vision Pro takes off in a few years, Apple will no doubt end up with a similar role.

It's been interesting to see the forces that shape a game up close: our ideological desire to make things that are new and different and meet our personal tastes, balanced against the need to have successful games to keep the company afloat (good old M-C-M'), and the need to satisfy Meta; all of this leaves its fingerprints on the game.

To not keep you in suspense, I think the demo to W. went pretty well; I can't really say more than that. It was also a good chance to tell the Meta guys about the parts of their APIs that are jank and hard to use - and to their credit they were apparently rather desperate to get feedback and I feel hopeful that they'll make it better.

It's hard to talk about Meta, because it's just such a massive organisation. We can talk about massive erosion of privacy, enabling genocide in Myanmar, and so on - but we're dealing with a small sub-corner of this huge beast, which is less a social media company and more of a games publisher and console manufacturer. But I definitely understand why someone wouldn't want to let a Facebook device loaded with cameras into their house! I could go more into privacy and the Quest 2 but it would be way too long a tangent. Ultimately this is probably a 'no ethical consumption'/'we live in a society' type of deal - one day Meta's domination will erode and we'll have to deal with a different superpower.

Whatever happens, we can continue to explore what's possible in this medium! I think of all the ethical bargains that must be made with the tech industry, I have done OK.

What Cologne is like

On Tuesday, I arrived in Cologne Central Station (Köln Hauptbahnhof) and walked over to my hotel, where I met my colleagues. Most of them looked fairly similar to how they'd set up their VR avatars... but none of them had realised I'm super tall. surprise, bitches ;p

We went out to an Indian restaurant where we all ended up ordering biryani. This being Germany, the portions were massive, so I asked for mine to be in a box to finish later, forgetting that my hotel room had no fridge or microwave and I'd have zero time to eat it (rip). Overall I think I hit it off pretty well, and we chatted for a while about games we liked, the mess that happened at Za/um, movies and the like - it was good to get a chance to interact more casually in person instead of only ever talking about work stuff. Everyone was exhausted from travel so we turned in pretty early, though probably not as early as the restaurant would have liked...

The thing that surprised me most about Cologne is how much it didn't feel strange or unfamiliar. If not for all the signs in German and cars driving on the right, you could drop me in an area of Cologne and tell me it's an unfamiliar part of London and I'd easily believe you. The parts of the city that are filled with business parks and glass-fronted chain stores could exist almost anywhere on Earth.

That said, there are some ways the Germans do things differently! One is restaurants. I visited three different restaurants and two of them worked on a 'self-service' model. Essentially, you order your food at the bar, and they give you a little buzzer device. When it buzzes, you go back up to the bar and collect your food. Nobody would wait tables, there would just be one person behind the bar taking orders and such (though someone would still have to clean your table).

Restaurants also close very early in Cologne. I think a couple of times we put staff in an awkward position of wanting to go home but having to sit around until our party was done. That said, at one point I walked through a riverside area with a few dozen steakhouses, and that seemed to stay open a lot later.

Köln has a decent amount of graffiti, a surprisingly large portion of it in English. Under most bridges there's usually a good number of tags. I didn't manage to get any good photos but shout out to the person who wrote something like 'this world is too damn loud', which is a big mood for autistic girl walking away from a convention centre lmao.

Wednesday: in which our heroine finds out what an influencer is

The next morning we all went down to a German bakery (pictured above). According to my colleagues, the thing to get is a Bienenstich, or 'Bee Sting', a kind of cake with crispy honeyed almond flakes on top and cream in the middle. Here's a really bad photo:

It was pretty tasty!

We scooted over to the convention centre on the metro, and made our way in. I started getting used to navigating the Messe. Our company didn't get our own booth this year, but XR game devs are pretty tight-knit, and Niantic, creators of Ingress and Pokémon Go, there to promote their new phone-based AR Monster Hunter game - lent us some space in their booth to do a demo to the popular VR influencers Cas and Chary.

We headed over to Hall 8 and none of us could find the Niantic booth. Eventually we figured out why: the Niantic booth was outdoors. On a very bright summer day.

The Quest 2 has a bit of a finicky relationship to light. If it's too dark, the cameras can't pick up anything and tracking can fail - hand tracking is especially susceptible. But bright sunlight is also a problem. Essentially, the controllers on the Quest 2 contain small infrared LEDs, which are tracked by the headset's cameras. This works very well, in general - but in the sun, the background infrared radiation can completely overwhelm these LEDs and the controllers become essentially unusable. You also have to be very careful never to let the sun shine through the lenses inside the headset when you take it off, or the focused sunlight can destroy the screen.

So, an outdoor demo was a problem. Luckily, Niantic had an air-conditioned tent in their little zone. We all filed into the tent and started testing the headsets. Even inside a tent, it was too bright for the Quest 2 hand tracking... but we managed to figure out the Quest Pro still worked (since it uses cameras in the controllers for tracking), and rushed to test everything would work. Before long, Cas and Chary arrived, and we demoed the game. Look mum, I'm in a tweet:

Before this convention I had very little knowledge of the whole world of VR influencers, and honestly I still don't, but it seems to be a big thing - a good word from an influencer is a massive boost to a game's chances. I'm still not entirely sure what the difference is between an influencer and a journalist; both are in the business of reviewing new tech and games and rely on a reputation of unbiased analysis for credibility, and both are courted by devs hoping to promote their games. I guess an influencer is like a fully independent journalist? In any case, Cas and Chary were really sweet in our extremely brief meeting, and it was amazing to see the first people from outside the company having fun with our game.

We got word that bHaptics, a Korean company which makes haptic suits and gloves for use with VR devices, had some space in their booth and were willing to let us do some demos there. So we set off back down the entire length of the convention centre to go into the secret Business Area.

Wednesday at Gamescom is restricted to trade visitors, meaning it's much less crowded than the later days. On those later days, that restriction only applies to the three halls designated as the Business Area. Like regular Gamescom, these halls are divided into flashy booths trying to sell you stuff, but in this case it's mostly companies trying to sell services and tools to developers: backend services, special 3D pens, anti-cheat... also a bunch of stands selling merch and figurines for some reason (maybe because they want to manufacture tie-in merch for your game), as well a bunch of national organisations promoting the game development scene in xyz country.

The Belgian stand functioned as a meeting spot, and they were also handing out vouchers for free beer. A strategy that seemed to be quite effective, judging by how crowded their booth became that evening.

We tested our headsets in the bHaptics zone, and discovered DOTS Netcode's prediction/rollback is good enough to make the game feel smooth even on public convention centre wifi, which was rather satisfying - so you know, good job Unity! Unfortunately the Shared Anchors continued to be a pain. We briefly ran into the head of DOTS at Unity and arranged a demo, scooted off to meet W. from Meta who bought us drinks, scooted over to Niantic again to meet some members of XR Bootcamp (a training course in XR game dev, whose cofounders Ferhan and Rahel seem to be the glue that holds the whole XR dev scene together), and at last wandered back to the Belgian zone...

...and then I went back to bHaptics to have a go at their gear. I didn't take a photo (rip) so here's a photo by CNet showing the full bHaptics getup, which in combination looks... kind of like you're the member of the SWAT team on washing up detail...

(source: Scott Stein/CNet)

I had never gotten to try any sort of haptic suit before this, so it was quite novel. Essentially the vest contains 40 (or 16) vibration motors; the gloves contain further motors on the tips of each finger, and there's another motorised ring between you and the headset. There are also motorised wrist bands, motorised ankle bands...

The first demo was designed to showcase the features of the suit and wristbands, so you could try out various actions like shooting guns or putting stuff in a backpack with and without haptics. A second demo focused on manipulating objects: no wristbands, just the glove and hand tracking.

Of the various devices, the most convincing was probably shooting with the haptic suit. Vibration motors are well-suited for brief, intense pulses, and firing guns definitely felt more impactful with the suit on - not a perfect simulation of impact, but a strong effect. The backpack demo was especially impressive: it really felt like dropping heavy objects into a backpack. You also got to shoot at your own mirror image and feel the bullet/laser impacts, which felt like a rather roundabout way to give myself a back massage, but I could see it being effective in the right game.

The hand demo convinced me less. The problem is that vibration is a poor simulacrum of pressing against a solid surface, so it just felt distracting to have a vibration pulse when i grabbed an object - and you still had the usual physics jank associated with manipulating objects in VR using hand tracking. The final section of the hand tracking demo was social interaction: you were faced with rotated clone avatar, and you could shake your hand, punch or slap yourself, or give yourself a hug. As someone who lives half a world away from most people I love, I think giving someone a hug in VR would be a fantastic use of the technology, but sadly this hug was... not entirely convincing. It is very hard to simulate a steady touch with vibration motors.

Ultimately I think the best use for this haptic gear may not be simulation fidelity, but more abstract: similar to the haptic suit used in certain public demos of Rez Infinite, pulsing in time to music. Such uses are mentioned on the bHaptics site, and I'd love to have been able to try that kind of demo. (And yeah, I'm sure you could hook it up to the other kind of remote-controlled vibrating devices if you so desired, though you'd probably have to do a bit of work to wire everything up.)

It was really cool to finally get to experience haptics, and I was very grateful to the bHaptics members for taking the time to show me their gear.

After I'd satisfied myself, I caught up with the gang; we went out to dinner with other XR devs at a Turkish restaurant called Bona'me near the river. (The food was tasty and had a decent amount of vege options, once again in huge portions but this time we split them between the table. ...and once again we were the last table to leave by a long way, and I feel bad for the staff who had to sit around waiting for us.)

There, I met a solo dev called Ben Outram, who's spent the last three years working on a game called Squingle, a fascinating psychedelic game about manipulating bubbles in a world of DMT-core abstract visuals. (Honestly, check this game out, it's nuts. Meta are sleeping on it, it should absolutely have a full store release.)

Thursday: chaos reigns

On Thursday it somehow ended up that in the space of an hour, we would be demoing our game to the head of DOTS development at Unity (whose name I somehow never managed to catch), demoing our other game Cybrix to Cas and Chary, and then doing the big important demo for meta. Then it turned out that our metro line was blocked by an accident up ahead. We hurried out to get an Uber, and our driver gave us a rather... exciting ride; he rolled down the window to argue with another driver and dropped us off in the middle of the road while we waited in traffic. Rather harried, we arrived back at the bHaptics corner and set up for the demos in an unused area of floor nearby.

I'm not sure if I can say too much about how our demos went, but unfortunately we ran into some versioning issues and were not able to show Cybrix to Cas and Chary before they had to rush off (we weren't the only one to face transport issues that morning). Lesson learned: test everything, not just the part you're worried about. It's not the end of the world, though, and we all headed over to W.'s hotel, into a swanky suite with a nicely laid table for the most important demo of the week. We had the room for maybe 20 minutes, then we were out the door again to the lobby of another hotel to talk it over.

After that... suddenly the afternoon was free, ish. We went back into Gamescom and ate some very expensive ramen. Then, word came that some more influencers wanted to try out our games, so it was back to bHaptics and well, the story gets a little repetitive at this point :p I can't say much more than that without talking about our game, so I will just have to say that the demos went well.

This was my view for most of Gamescom.

At the end of the day, I had a couple of free hours to scoot over to the indie games area and try out some games before everyone went home. At this point my social batteries had run very dry indeed so I was glad to get some time to just play games.

The indie zone was divided into lots and lots of small booths, typically just wide enough for one computer. And even late in the evening, it was very, very busy...

This is just one small corner of the indie area.

Not really knowing almost any of these games, my 1337 MLG Pro Gamescom strat was to wander around until I spotted an empty chair and then play whatever game was going and chat with the dev if they were around. This worked out pretty well! I'll write up the games I played in a moment, but first I'm overdue to wax philosophical.

What was really striking about walking around the indie area is just how many games there are. Wandering around you can pretty quickly spot patterns and influences just by glimpsing at screens (here's a combat tutorial, there's a crafting/survival game, and yonder a narrative game that's borrowed the entire interface of Disco Elysium).

I've seen, up close and personal now, just how much fiddly effort and dedication it takes to make a game. There's something kind of strange and alienating to me about encountering all this creative output in a massive aggregate, where you can only give it maybe half an hour in a noisy room, surrounded by a dozen more or less similar games, in a way that kind of demands you rapidly assign it into a broad, combinatoric category: x art style, y core mechanic, z emotional register. Presenting this game this way really seems to file them all down to Content, which can be boxed and tagged and matched to a consumer with the appropriate set of subculture flags.

One thing that is distinctive about games as a medium to me is the very strong separation between 'mechanics' and 'presentation'. To produce a game you don't just need a system to manipulate, but also associate it with a narrative to make it comprehensible and lend it some sort of affective impact.

So you could theoretically make a game with the exact same mechanics as, say, Half-Life 2 - the same movement, the same enemy hitboxes, the same collision geometry and shooting mechanics and progression - but a completely different presentation style and telling a completely different story. Indeed, a typical early stage of game development has placeholder 'programmer art' and 'greybox' levels.

Equally, you could lift the iconography of a game and drape it over a completely different mechanical substrate - and indeed, it isn't at all uncommon for major franchises to launch spinoffs in different genres.

So games as a medium consist of all these different pieces which you can attach in various ways to define a game which you can name. And once this is done, that game becomes in a sense 'concrete': we act as if Half-Life 2 is an object with a distinct existence. It's a powerful social construct. Then, a successful game is then one which manages to unify all these disparate elements into some sort of whole that feels coherent. Game development sees all the possible elements of a game gradually collapse into whatever gets released. It's highly stochastic: an arbitrary decision by a tired dev, or even a glitch, might later become fixed as one of the core icons of the great 'Franchise'.

When there were less games around, and it was a lot harder for people to get their hands on dev tools, it made sense to think of games as solid, discrete things. Whatever you got on the cartridge or disc was pretty much immutable. Now, though, most major games operate as a 'service' that is constantly modified, and it is not uncommon either for players to mod a game, on a continuum from small changes like injecting shaders or changing music, to total conversion mods that are a 'whole new game'.

And indie games, then... you've got a subculture which heavily emphasise sharing techniques, and it's just as beholden to genre as AAA games. The existence of all these games side by side, even though each one has its own name and identity, seems to further break up "games" into combinations of pieces. When I encounter a new third-person action game, it's as a variation on a kind of broader, abstracted super-game. My first task is to discover the particular quirks of this manifestation of the third person action game. The days when we had a shared culture of 'games everyone has played' are basically already gone, but we still have a certain degree of shared context, because each game is a probe into that constantly evolving game-space, which someone has gone to the trouble to fish out and decorate...

I suppose this is all coming back around to the otaku database thing, isn't it? Or just semiotics in general...

Anyway, here's what I found on Thursday:

I played an FPS called Serum, in which the core conceit is that you inject big syringes into your arm to give yourself powerups. Otherwise, it seems to be a game about gathering and crafting. Sadly the demo computer didn't have headphones, so I was missing sound, and seemed to be a bit underpowered for the game. Nevertheless, I walked around a bit, manufactured a healing serum, and shot some wolf and rabbit monsters with a bow and arrow.

I feel like I was rather ruder than I intended to be, because in talking to the dev afterwards, the first thing I mentioned was the performance issues and he had to apologise like, yeah, we're running it on a laptop (it sounded like he said with a 3070? but I must have misheard him, unless he has very high standards for underpowered), it does run better on a proper computer. The environment design in this game was definitely really strong. Not quite sure how the serum mechanic would work in practice - it sounds quite like Bioshock's plasmids, but the demo didn't really give the opportunity to try out the different options.

I played Dead Pets Unleashed, an adventure game about a demon girl in a struggling punk band. One of the devs was hanging out with this one and generally had a great vibe, joking about how almost nobody picked a certain option and suggesting the route that would get the most out of the demo.

The game uses a sidescrolling perspective with hand-drawn sprites. The art style is very consciously flat, its population of monster people allowing an impressive variety of colours. It broadly alternates between conversations with choices that adjust stats (e.g. +punk, -social) and a variety of minigames - there was a music minigame of course (the conceit being chasing away intrusive thoughts), but I also washed a dildo, constructed a hot dog, and waited tables. Generally it oozed style, absolutely nailing the punk vibe, and had a bunch of cute features like changing your character's outfit. You can play the same demo on Steam. I think this is one I might well get when the full release comes.

And then I played... a game I can't even find now! I really should have made a note or taken a picture or something. It was a kind of Amanita-like point and click game in which you play a tin can person, manipulating objects as you try to rescue your can dog, descending into a city made of cardboard boxes. The puzzles were occasionally a bit obtuse, but the cute style really carried it. The devs weren't on hand for this one, but they did have a wall where you could leave postit notes with your comments on the game, including one with a fairly essential hint for the first puzzle. It was called something like 'can world' or 'box world', but at this point, I can't find it anywhere. It's a shame because I thought it was neat.

That was all I had time for on Thursday: I zoomed off to another restaurant by the river to eat some more falafels. Someone let off some fireworks for some reason.

We started to make our way back, across the famous Hohenzollern Bridge, which is one of those bridges with a tradition that lovers will attach a padlock to the fence to symbolise how long their relationship will last.

At this point the padlocks have started to resemble kudzu, hanging down in strands of linked padlocks, or even growing up onto the superstructure of the bridge on chains. Questionable symbolism or not, it all makes for a fantastic textural effect, especially since it maintains the sheer density of padlocks for the entire length of the bridge.

While we were crossing, a boat passed under the bridge carrying some kind of a party. From a distance, all you could really see was a mass of glowsticks, and all you could hear was the ghost of the beat. It was a cool sight.

At this point I was pretty much completely exhausted so while there was some kind of industry party I definitely could not handle the crowds and walked home past the cathedral for an early night, eager to head in early to Gamescom tomorrow with a good night's sleep...

Friday: just like in my Bloodbornes, amirite gamers?

Predictably I overslept. Since I'd only get a few hours at Gamescom, I decided to visit the famous cathedral. I took that photo that I posted earlier, where somehow my little phone camera absolutely nailed the lighting, even if the cathedral is severely out of focus...

I headed inside the building too.

Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom) is a bit of an oddball, historically. While it wasn't uncommon for cathedral-building projects to last a century, after working on this thing from 1248–1560 they downed tools, leaving the city with a half-finished cathedral for about 300 years.

They had the front and back of a cathedral, with a big crane on the front part.

In the 1800s, the middle ages were in and the state decided it would be a good idea to have a big cathedral - both to make their new Catholic subjects happy and a symbol of THE NATION. After raising a stonking amount of money with one of the world's first NGOs, they built the rest of this thing, which briefly became the tallest building in the world. Hooray, said Emperor Wilhelm I. I love being a big strong nation with a big cathedral dick.

The cathedral survived the first world war, but got hit by a lot of bombs in the second - though the towers remained standing. After the war, they put it back up again. Now, it's a tourist attraction. Transsexual atheists can walk in and turn their phone to funny angles to try and capture the ceiling...

You can call this a Deutsch angle, because... ok whatever guys they can't all be winners.

They've got some old school Christian-style guro in here.

The interior is pretty cool: huge vaulted ceiling, massive stained glass. The stained glass unfortunately photographs really poorly on a phone, the colours washed out pretty much no matter what. They did have this funky ladder contraption, which I assume is probably used for maintaining/washing the windows...

After a little while in there I decided this was pretty neat but I'd go to Gamescom, to say goodbye to everyone and maybe get a glance at some of the mainstream game zones. As it turned out we had another demo lined up, so we went back to The Corner Near BHaptics and did the routine. This time the audience was mostly other VR devs so I got to have some nice technical discussion.

At last, I had about an hour before my train. I thought about exploring the indie game zone some more, but decided I should really at least take a glance through the other halls. What I discovered was... queues! Many many queues. And various elaborate dioramas.

Sometimes they had actors to go with them. I decided to include the people taking the photo because... I don't even know what I was going for with this one to be honest, it seems kind of banal.

Here's a queue of people waiting to play Rogue Trader, which boldly tells you it's the first(!) CRPG in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, hopefully not also the last. 'Warhammer CRPG' is a concept that 16-year-old Bryn would have gone completely insane about. 31-year-old Bryn was still a bit curious, but not enough to wait for a sitting down queue with less than an hour left at the con.

I didn't take a lot of photos of the Extremely Gamer Shit, but for a taster, this lady was DJing a set on something called the 'Leet Desk', which appears to be a desk with built in RGB lighting, billed as 'the desk for gamers', because we can no longer contain the rainbow puke. When I walked past, she was playing an EDM remix of a tune that I vaguely recognised from a movie or a game but couldn't place specifically, which felt about right. Maybe it was Skyrim?

A lot of people walked around with the Hoyoverse bag, Hoyoverse being the collective term for the games of Chinese developer miHoYo such as Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact. Their slogan was 'tech otakus save the world', which thanks to their cunning move of handing out large bags, was soon paraded all over the convention. I feel like the jury is still out on the impact (ha ha) of tech otakus on the world...

In the end, the last hour was spent briefly walking around to see the halls and then I left to say my goodbyes and hop back on the train. The journey back was totally straightforward. I finished reading my manga and drew some more train passengers, who were generally pretty happy to be drawn.

Cosplay

It's a con, there's gotta be cosplayers right? Sure enough, the crowd was peppered with stormtroopers, kitsune, army men, luffies and various spooky skull guys... I didn't get many photos but here's a couple.

Obligatory stormtroopers. Luckily, the inside of the con was airconditioned, those suits look toasty.

These three kindly stopped to pose for me. I don't know what game they're doing, Dead by Daylight maybe? DbD girls, tell me ^^'

This robot-girl cosplayer's costume is neat: when you look close you see it's made of old PC parts. Or at least the casings of them. I spotted a graphics card and an old VR headset. She also has built-in stilts so she towered over everyone, big respect. She was hanging out in the hall on Wednesday, so she might have been there in an official capacity, but I didn't get a chance to talk to her.

Observations of demographics and stuff

It's been a good long while since I've been to any sort of nerd convention. Mostly I've been to scifi/media fandom cons like Nine Worlds and Worldcon, or general nerd-shit cons like MCM Expo, and in the old old days, Warhammer cons like Game Day. But this event being specifically a gaming expo was pretty new to me.

Predictably the demographics skewed male (but not overwhelmingly) and white/East Asian (almost without exception). The various national organisations present were primarily European (which tracks for an event in Germany) but there were large stands e.g. promoting Korean game dev or the Guangzhao region of China. In the indie zone, there were a good handful of Japanese devs, and I spotted one game that was fully in JP. Here and there, you'd spot banners promoted other gaming expos - a lot in Europe, but also there is apparently a Gamescom Asia in Singapore, and a Tokyo Indie Games Summit which sounds pretty fun. By contrast, while I don't have any real stats to substantiate, I would say I saw very few organisations were promoting game devs from South America, Africa or Oceania.

Beyond that... this is very definitely a place for nerds, but there's a lot of different varieties of nerd you can be now. So sure, T-shirts with slogans and cargo shorts for many, but equally you could dress super goth, you could show off all your tattoos, you could go in your colourful coordinated kitsune cosplay or just wear some bright hair die. I'm confident I saw a few other girls from the isle of 🏳️‍⚧️, but 'hello I clocked you let's be friends' is not the best introduction even from another trans girl lmao - in general I didn't really talk to people besides the group I had arrived with. I think if I'd gone alone, it would not be the sort of con where you make a lot of friends, but who knows?

All in all, a solid adventure. I'll probably go again next year, if I can find somewhere cheaper to stay. I never did get to see the chocolate museum.

ok, story over - thanks for reading, nerd ;p

[desdealgunlugardelsur]

Harrison Ford: 2022 review

2022 has been a very busy year for Harrison! From finishing the next instalment of the Indiana Jones franchise, to star in his first TV shows in decades: the sitcom Shrinking and the western 1923. Let's have a look at the summary of this glorious year for Harrison's career.

JANUARY: no news. but Harrison is probably still working on the set of Indiana Jones 5.

FEBRUARY:

Frank Marshall announces Indiana Jones 5 had wrapped principal photography.

Harrison visits Barcelona

MARCH:

Harrison invites the whole cast and crew of Indy 5 to a wrap party in London

APRIL:

Harrison Ford To Star In ‘Shrinking’ Apple TV+ Series

Indiana Jones 5 Has Same Feel As The Original, Says Mads Mikkelsen

Cryptic picture of Harrison celebrating Easter:

Disney Exec Teases Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Indiana Jones, The Marvels, and More Footage Coming Soon

MAY:

Harrison For attends the play "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?", played by his wife Calista Flockhart

New promo picture of Indy 5:

Harrison spotted in Fort Worth, Texas

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Istanbul Grill (@istanbulgrill.bar)

Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren to Star in ‘Yellowstone’ Prequel ‘1932’

Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford are joining the “Yellowstone” universe in the upcoming series “1932” for Paramount+.

“1932,” which is the show’s working title, is an origin story introducing a new generation of the Dutton family. It’s set to explore the early 20th century when pandemics, historic drought, the end of Prohibition and the Great Depression all plague the mountain West and the Duttons who call it home,” the streamer said in a release.

(Note that the actual title of the show is 1923)

‘Indiana Jones 5’ First Look: Harrison Ford Returns as Swaggering Adventurer

Star Wars Celebration: Harrison Ford Makes Surprise Appearance for John Williams Birthday Tribute, Gives ‘Indiana Jones 5’ Update

JUNE:

Brett Goldstein Takes His ‘Ted Lasso’ Skills To ‘Shrinking’ Comedy With Harrison Ford At Apple TV+

JULY:

Directing this fellow this week. One of the highlights of my career.

(I’m not sure but this could be on the set of Shrinking, the new show for Apple TV)

Surprise party on the set if Shrinking to celebrate Harry's birthday

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kristin Heitkotter (@kikihaircutter)

AUGUST:

Warner Bros. Wanted Harrison Ford to Play Kevin Smith's Perry White

Kevin Smith reveals Warner Bros. wanted Harrison Ford to play Perry White in his episode of Strange Adventures, the cancelled HBO Max anthology show.

SEPTEMBER:

Exclusive: Harrison Ford In Talks For Fantastic Four Role

According to our trusted and proven sources, Marvel Studios wants Harrison Ford for the upcoming, mysterious Fantastic Four movie.

(I must say this hasn't been confirmed yet)

Harrison on the set of 1923:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Harrison Ford (@harrisonfordaily)

Harrison Ford and Ke Huy Quan reunite 38 years after ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’.

The trailer of Indiana Jones 5 is released to the Press, together with an exhibition of the costumes used in the movie

James Mangold and Harrison Ford debuted the first footage from the film at D23 Expo.

Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and director James Mangold surprised fans at D23Expo.

OCTOBER:

Harrison Ford Set As General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross For ‘Captain America: New World Order’, Will Star Opposite Anthony Mackie

 It’s official. Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones franchise) will be taking over the Marvel role of General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, beginning with Phase 5 title Captain America: New World Order. He’ll star opposite Anthony Mackie, with Shira Haas, Tim Blake Nelson and Carl Lumbly also among the ensemble.

1923: Harrison Ford & Helen Mirren Series Expanded to Two Seasons, Paramount+ Sets Premiere Date

1923 is coming soon to Paramount+, and the series will stick around a bit longer than expected. What was expected to be a one-season limited series, has now been expanded to two eight-episode seasons. The Yellowstone prequel series will star Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, Sebastian Roché, Darren Mann, Michelle Randolph, James Badge Dale, Marley Shelton, Brian Geraghty, Aminah Nieves, Julia Schlaepfer, Brandon Sklenar, Robert Patrick, and Jerome Flynn.

The series will arrive on Paramount+ on December 19th with a special two-hour premiere.

NOVEMBER:

1923 First Look: Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren Come to Yellowstone

The pair unveil their new series set at the Dutton ranch a century ago. “These are extraordinary people in an extraordinary time,” Ford says.

'1923' Teaser Offers First Exciting Look at Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren in 'Yellowstone' Spinoff

Empire’s World-Exclusive Indiana Jones 5 Covers Revealed

1923 Official Trailer:

'Shrinking' teaser trailer released

DECEMBER:

Indiana Jones 5 Official Trailer and Title released: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

See Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford in '1923' Premiere Photos — Taken with a Camera from the 1920s!

Helen Mirren Praises Her ‘1923’ Co-Star Harrison Ford at Premiere: ‘He Taught Me a Great Deal About Film Acting’

“1923” LA Premiere Screening & After Party

Harrison Ford Loves His Craft. ‘1923’ Tested His Limits.

[jcmarchi]

UK and France to collaborate on AI following Horizon membership

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/uk-and-france-to-collaborate-on-ai-following-horizon-membership/

UK and France to collaborate on AI following Horizon membership

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The UK and France have announced new funding initiatives and partnerships aimed at advancing global AI safety. The developments come in the wake of the UK’s association with Horizon Europe, a move that was broadly seen as putting the divisions of Brexit in the past and the repairing of relations for the good of the continent.

French Minister for Higher Education and Research, Sylvie Retailleau, is scheduled to meet with UK Secretary of State Michelle Donelan in London today for discussions marking a pivotal moment in bilateral scientific cooperation.

Building upon a rich history of collaboration that has yielded groundbreaking innovations such as the Concorde and the Channel Tunnel, the ministers will endorse a joint declaration aimed at deepening research ties between the two nations. This includes a commitment of £800,000 in new funding towards joint research efforts, particularly within the framework of Horizon Europe.

A landmark partnership between the UK’s AI Safety Institute and France’s Inria will also be unveiled, signifying a shared commitment to the responsible development of AI technology. This collaboration is timely, given France’s upcoming hosting of the AI Safety Summit later this year—which aims to build upon previous agreements and discussions on frontier AI testing achieved during the UK edition last year.

Furthermore, the establishment of the French-British joint committee on Science, Technology, and Innovation represents an opportunity to foster cooperation across a range of fields, including low-carbon hydrogen, space observation, AI, and research security.

UK Secretary of State Michelle Donelan said:

“The links between the UK and France’s brightest minds are deep and longstanding, from breakthroughs in aerospace to tackling climate change. It is only right that we support our innovators, to unleash the power of their ideas to create jobs and grow businesses in concert with our closest neighbour on the continent.

Research is fundamentally collaborative, and alongside our bespoke deal on Horizon Europe, this deepening partnership with France – along with our joint work on AI safety – is another key step in realising the UK’s science superpower ambitions.”

The collaboration between the UK and France underscores their shared commitment to advancing scientific research and innovation, with a focus on emerging technologies such as AI and quantum.

Sylvie Retailleau, French Minister of Higher Education and Research, commented:

“This joint committee is a perfect illustration of the international component of research – from identifying key priorities such as hydrogen, AI, space and research security – to enabling collaborative work and exchange of ideas and good practices through funding.

Doing so with a trusted partner as the UK – who just associated to Horizon Europe – is a great opportunity to strengthen France’s science capabilities abroad, and participate in Europe’s strategic autonomy openness.”

As the UK continues to deepen its engagement with global partners in the field of science and technology, these bilateral agreements serve as a testament to its ambition to lead the way in scientific discovery and innovation on the world stage.

(Photo by Aleks Marinkovic on Unsplash)

See also: UK Home Secretary sounds alarm over deepfakes ahead of elections

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: ai safety summit, artificial intelligence, europe, france, government, horizon europe, research, safety, uk

[zellkabellk]

I was so busy with Japan Expo that I couldn’t get a ticket for the Critical Role cast’s visit in London in october... sad 😔

[suprememastertv]

The Plant Based World Expo Europe was held in London, UK, from November 30 to December 1, 2022. As Europe’s largest 100% plant-based business-to-business exposition, the two-day event had conferences, thoughtful guest speakers, and culinary demos. An estimated 4,000-plus attendees eagerly explored the exhibition halls filled with representatives from 200 international vegan firms like Hong Kong-based @omnifoods.uk, UK’s vegan egg company @loveoggs, Romanian startup @verdinofoods.uk, Spanish vegan meat firm @heurafoods, and many more. @lovinghutarchway was present as well to introduce Light Light vegan products from Taiwan, also known as Formosa, while offering delicious food samples. Participants, buyers, and investors had the opportunity to hear 60 speakers from the industry who shared the latest business insights and trends.

Thank you, @plantbasedworldeurope, for promoting compassionate vegan businesses. In Heaven’s uplifting care, we pray for more such expositions like this to help lead the world in a sustainable direction.

🌿 Be Vegan, Make Peace 🕊 Do Good Deeds 💗

SupremeMasterTV.com

#SupremeMasterTV #GoVegan #PlantBased #plantbasedindustry #vegantradeshow #plantbasedtradeshow #alternativeprotein #foodindustry #foodandbeverage #foodinnovation

[englishpathschool]

Why should you learn German in Berlin?

Learning German abroad is a very exciting journey. But, when it comes to moving abroad to study, it's important to choose the right city to have an amazing experience and achieve all your learning goals. Berlin, the capital of Germany, and dog lovers (yes, that's a thing) is the top choice for international students who want to study German. Students come from all around the world to learn German in Berlin. But, to help you make an informed decision, we are going to be looking at the most compelling reasons why you should choose Berlin as your study abroad destination to master the German language.

German is the official language of Germany: More than 95% of the people in Germany are fluent in German. This is a great opportunity for you to learn German in Berlin and put the language skills you learn in the class to test in the real world. You can practice your conversational, pronunciation and comprehension skills. You can begin by holding conversations with the locals in places near your school, a cafe, a shop or a diner.

Learn about German history: Germany has a diverse and fascinating history waiting for you to explore. From political, artistic and scientific discoveries, every corner of the city is filled with stories from the past. These stories can not only offer a unique experience for international students but are also a great learning opportunity for German language students to understand the language in its most authentic setting.

Immerse yourself in German traditions and customs: If you choose to study German in Berlin, you are also giving yourself a permission to immerse yourself in the German way of life. You can visit attend traditional folk festival that celebrate German cuisine, music and art to learn about their hundreds of years old traditions and customs. Even by visiting their busy street markets you can catch a glimpse of German life.

Quality German language courses: As the most spoken language in the city and one of the top study-abroad destinations, it should come as a no surprise that there are numerous language schools that offer high-quality German courses. Based on your learning style, language goals and schedule, you can choose from the options available. One of the student favourites is EP Berlin. Located in the heart of the city, the language school is famous for their experienced teachers, spacious classrooms and student support staff that make learning German a fun and exciting experience.

A thriving expat community: Thanks to a vast international student population, Berlin is home to a large expat community. There's a high chance that you will encounter a fellow student from your country and background, if not at your school, then definitely around the city at the local student cafes, exchange groups or social clubs. It's a great chance for you to connect with other students who have gone on the same journey as you and share your experiences.

Professional networking opportunities: Germany is known around the world as the origin of some of the most luxurious and premium cars, including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, and Porsche, but it offers so much more than that. Some of the most renowned events, such as the Berlin International Film Festival, Berlin Art Week, European Sign Expo (ESE), FESPA, and DMEA- Connecting Healthcare IT, are hosted in Berlin. While improving your language skills, you can attend these international events and connect with professionals in the field you're interested in. Meeting some of the industry experts at these events can even lead to future career pathways for you.

Affordable living cost: Compared to other major European cities like Paris or London, Berlin offers a relatively affordable cost of living for international students. This is one of the reasons why students around the world choose Berlin as their study-abroad destination. You will receive high quality education without putting a whole in your pocket. By choosing to learn German in Berlin, you can enjoy a vibrant lifestyle and focus on your language skill as well.

Whether you're drawn by the opportunities to practice your language skills, the city's fascinating history, its modern-day professional allure or attractive option for students on a budget, Berlin is one of the best places to master the German language. So, what are you waiting for? Select your language course and learn German in Berlin for a memorable experience.

[digitalageexpo]

The Power of Networking: Building Strong Business Connections for Your Exhibition in London

Networking is a cornerstone of success in the business world, especially when preparing for an exhibition in a vibrant city like London. Here’s how strategic networking can elevate your presence and outcomes at your upcoming exhibition.

Why Networking Matters

Networking isn’t just about exchanging business cards—it’s about forging meaningful connections that can propel your business forward. For your exhibition in London, networking can:

Expand Your Reach: Connecting with industry peers, potential clients, and influencers broadens your audience and exposes your brand to new opportunities.

Build Trust and Credibility: Meeting face-to-face allows you to establish genuine relationships, which are crucial for building trust and credibility in your industry.

Generate Leads and Opportunities: Networking events are fertile ground for generating leads and discovering new business opportunities, whether through direct sales or partnerships.

Stay Ahead of Trends: Engaging with professionals keeps you informed about industry trends, allowing you to adapt your exhibition strategy accordingly and stay competitive.

How to Network Effectively for Your Exhibition

Prepare Elevator Pitches: Craft concise, engaging pitches that highlight what makes your exhibition compelling and why attendees should visit your booth.

Attend Industry Events: London hosts numerous industry-specific events and networking meetups. Research and attend those most relevant to your business to maximize your exposure.

Utilize Social Media: Leverage platforms like LinkedIn to connect with professionals attending the exhibition beforehand. Engage in relevant discussions and showcase your expertise.

Follow Up: After meeting someone, follow up promptly to nurture the relationship. Personalized follow-ups demonstrate your commitment and can lead to fruitful collaborations.

Offer Value: Networking isn’t just about what you can gain—it’s about what you can offer. Be genuine, listen actively, and look for ways to help others, whether through advice, connections, or resources.

Building Connections at Your London Exhibition

Host Engaging Booth Activities: Plan interactive activities or demonstrations that encourage visitors to spend time at your booth and engage with your team.

Organize Networking Sessions: Consider hosting a dedicated networking session or happy hour at your booth to attract attendees and facilitate meaningful conversations.

Collaborate with Influencers: Partnering with influencers or industry leaders can amplify your reach and credibility. Invite them to visit your booth or participate in your exhibition activities.

Collect Feedback: Use networking opportunities to gather feedback on your exhibition offerings, marketing materials, and overall brand perception.

Conclusion

Networking is a powerful strategy for enhancing your presence at a business exhibition in London. By expanding your reach, building trust, generating leads, staying informed, and fostering meaningful connections, you can maximize your exhibition’s impact and achieve long-term business success.

[blueorchidhotels]

Whats on in Excel London October 2024

Dive into an exciting array of events at Excel London this October 2024. From thrilling exhibitions to dynamic conferences, our curated list promises an exhilarating month of discovery and engagement. Explore the diverse offerings within the iconic venue, ensuring you stay informed and make the most of your London experience.

Digital Transformation EXPO London

2–3 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/digital-transformation-expo-london

Women in Business & Tech Expo

2–3 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/women-in-business-tech-expo-2024

Dentistry Show London 2024

4–5 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/dentistry-show-london-2024

The Property Investor Show

4–5 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/the-property-investor-show-2024

Digital Commerce Expo

4–5 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/digital-commerce-expo

Create Your Future London 2024

7–8 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/create-your-future-london-2024

Employee Benefits Live

8–9 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/employee-benefits-live-2024

#RISK London

9–10 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/risk-london-2024

CCR — Cosmetic Regenerative Congress

10–11 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/ccr-2024

Smart Buildings Show 2024

9–10 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/smart-buildings-show-2024

Salon International

12–14 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/salon-international-2024

New Scientist Live

12–14 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/New-Scientist-Live-2024

FutureScape 2024

15–16 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/futurescape-2024

Outdoor Living & Wellness Expo

15–16 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/outdoor-living-wellness-expo-2024

Recycling Expo

15–16 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/recycling-expo-2024

Street Food Business Expo

15–16 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/street-food-business-expo-2024

Restaurant & Takeaway Innovation Expo

15–16 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/restaurant-takeaway-innovation-expo-2024

Responsible Packaging Expo

15–16 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/responsible-packaging-expo-2024

Hotel & Resort Innovation Expo

15–16 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/hotel-resort-innovation-expo-2024

Cafe Business Expo

15–16 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/cafe-business-expo-2024

UK Black Business Week

14–19 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/uk-black-business-week

Clean & Tidy Home Show

19–20 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/clean-tidy-home-show-2024

London Snow Show

19–20 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/london-snow-show-2024

Musical Con 2024

19–20 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/musical-con-2024

The National Wedding Show

19–20 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/the-national-wedding-show-autumn-2024

The Global Peace & Unity Festival 2024

19–20 October 2024

Event Location: Excel, London

Discover More: https://www.excel.london/visitor/whats-on/the-global-peace-unity-festival-2024

*Note: Check the official website and confirm the dates if any change

Enjoy the events by booking hotels near Excel London, Victoria Station, Tower Bridge & Buckingham palace.

Best Hotels to Stay in Central London:

Blue Orchid hotels in Central London offers a diverse range of accommodation options. Blue orchid hotels in London is the best independent hotel chain.

Blue Orchid Tower Suites: A luxurious option in Central London, offering spacious suites with modern amenities and stunning city views.

Blue Orchid Tower Residence: Experience a residential-style stay with top-notch service and comfortable accommodations.

The Wellington by Blue Orchid: This upscale hotel provides a blend of classic elegance and contemporary comforts, ideal for travellers seeking a refined experience. Situated in a prime location, this hotel offers a mix of style and convenience, making it a great base for exploring Central London.

Top London Hotel Packages from Blue orchid hospitality:

ROYAL TIME AT THE TOWER  RELAX AND UNWIND  FAMILY PACKAGE  SUITE SUNDAY

And many more. Visit Blue orchid for more Central London Hotel deals

Blue Orchid Hotels Nearby attractions to spend your time And Feel the Royal

Hotel near Tower Bridge — Tower Suites, Affordable & Luxury 5 Star Hotel in Tower of London.

Hotel near Tower of London — Tower Residence, best contemporary one and two-bed Serviced apartments

Hotel near Victoria Station, Buckingham palace & Westminster Abbey — The Wellington, Affordable & Luxury 4 Star Hotel in Westminster

Book venues in central London by blue orchid, Suitable for Conference and Meeting Events, Private Party Space and Rooftop Event Venue for your next celebrations in Central London.

[teslaproperties]

Why This Is the Ideal Time to Buy Property in Dubai

For many years, buyers and investors from around the world have looked to the Dubai real estate market as a model. With its stunning skyline, vibrant lifestyle, and booming economy, the city continues to offer an attractive blend of luxury, comfort, and opportunity. If you’re looking to buy property in Dubai, now is the perfect time to take the plunge. From high rental yields to new laws making it easier for foreigners to own properties, Dubai is paving the way for growth in the real estate sector.

1. Dubai’s Booming Economy and Market Stability

One of the most compelling reasons to consider to buy property in Dubai is the strength of its economy. Despite global economic fluctuations, Dubai has maintained market stability, thanks to its diversified economy, which includes tourism, trade, and finance. The city's infrastructure, with world-class facilities and transport systems, also contributes to its growing appeal. With more foreign investors entering the market, demand for properties in Dubai is on the rise, driving property values up steadily.

This economic growth makes it the ideal time to invest, as property prices are expected to appreciate, offering significant long-term gains.

2. High Rental Yields

For investors looking to generate income, the Dubai property market is one of the most lucrative in the world. According to recent data, rental yields in Dubai range between 6% and 10%, significantly higher than many other major cities like London or New York. With a thriving expatriate population and continuous demand for rentals, owning dubai property for sale can provide a solid stream of passive income.

Investors who buy property in Dubai now can benefit from these high rental returns, making it a smart choice for long-term financial growth.

3. Favorable Property Laws for Foreign Buyers

Dubai is a global leader in real estate due in part to its advantageous property regulations. The UAE government has implemented a number of reforms in recent years to promote foreign investment. Non-residents can now own freehold properties in designated areas, ensuring full ownership rights without the need for a local partner.

This openness to foreign ownership, combined with investor-friendly visa options tied to real estate purchases, makes buying property in Dubai more accessible and attractive than ever before. If you're looking to find property in Dubai, it’s easier now than it has ever been for international buyers.

4. Wide Range of Properties to Suit Every Buyer

From luxury villas and apartments to more affordable housing options, Dubai offers something for every type of buyer. Whether you’re interested in a dubai house for sale or an upscale penthouse in the heart of the city, Dubai’s diverse real estate market caters to different needs and budgets.

For those looking to buy property in Dubai as a second home, investment, or primary residence, there’s a wide selection of neighborhoods to choose from. Areas like Downtown Dubai, Dubai Marina, and Palm Jumeirah are some of the most desirable locations for luxury homes. Meanwhile, districts like Business Bay and Jumeirah Village Circle offer great value for investors and first-time buyers.

5. Expo 2020 Legacy and Infrastructure Development

Dubai’s successful hosting of Expo 2020 continues to shape the city’s development. The massive event raised awareness of Dubai as a major international centre for real estate, innovation, and business. In the aftermath of the Expo, several infrastructure projects and new communities are emerging, further enhancing the city's real estate landscape.

As Dubai continues to expand its infrastructure, including new schools, hospitals, and commercial centers, buying now puts you in a position to benefit from these developments. Properties purchased today will likely see an increase in value as these surrounding amenities evolve.

6. The Rise of Sustainable and Smart Communities

An increasing number of real estate markets in Dubai are focussing on sustainability. Many developers are now building eco-friendly and smart communities, offering residents a combination of technology and sustainability. These innovations make living in Dubai more efficient and environmentally responsible.

If you're looking to buy property in Dubai, investing in these forward-thinking communities will not only offer you modern living but also ensure a future-proof investment. Tesla Properties, one of the best real estate agencies in Dubai, offers expert guidance to help you find the perfect sustainable property that aligns with your needs.

7. Tax-Free Investment Opportunities

One of the most appealing aspects of investing in properties in Dubai is the tax-free environment. There are no capital gains or property taxes, meaning your earnings from renting or selling your property will not be taxed. This fosters a very advantageous environment for both domestic and foreign investors.

For those interested in maximizing their returns, buying property in Dubai offers unmatched financial advantages compared to other global cities. This tax benefit further enhances the long-term profitability of owning real estate in Dubai.

8. Collaborating with Dubai's Top Real Estate Firm

It can be challenging to navigate the Dubai real estate market, particularly for foreign investors or first-time purchasers. Making selections with the assistance of a reputable real estate company in Dubai, such as Tesla Properties, guarantees success. With extensive market knowledge and access to the latest property listings, Tesla Properties helps clients find property in Dubai that meets their investment goals and lifestyle preferences.

Tesla Properties is known for its expert guidance, exceptional service, and a strong portfolio of Dubai real estate. Whether you’re looking for a luxury apartment or a villa, Tesla Properties will help you secure the best deals in the market.

Conclusion: The Time to Buy is Now

With a booming economy, high rental yields, favorable laws for foreign investors, and a wide range of property options, there has never been a better time to buy property in Dubai. Whether you’re an investor looking for high returns or a buyer seeking a new home in one of the world’s most dynamic cities, Dubai’s real estate market offers unparalleled opportunities.

Partner with Tesla Properties, one of the best real estate agencies in Dubai, to help you navigate the market and secure your investment. Don’t miss out on the chance to own a piece of Dubai’s thriving real estate landscape—act now and reap the benefits of investing in one of the world’s most exciting property markets. For more information, visit Tesla Properties to explore the best dubai property for sale options today!

[blockchainappmaker07]

Why Choose a Blockchain Development Company in London for Your Next Project

>> Introduction

In today’s competitive digital landscape, businesses are rapidly adopting blockchain development company in London technology to innovate, improve transparency, and enhance security. When it comes to selecting a blockchain development partner, location plays a crucial role in determining the expertise, industry connections, and opportunities for collaboration. London has emerged as a major hub for blockchain development company in London innovation, making it an ideal location for businesses seeking top-notch blockchain development services.

1. Access to Cutting-Edge Talent

London boasts a vibrant tech ecosystem, attracting some of the brightest minds in blockchain development. The city is home to numerous prestigious universities and technical institutes that specialize in blockchain development company in London  research, which means that development companies here have access to top talent. This expertise ensures that your project will be handled by professionals with deep knowledge of blockchain technologies, such as Ethereum, Hyperledger, and Polkadot.

2. A Global Financial Hub

As one of the world’s largest financial centers, London has a unique advantage in blockchain development company in London , particularly for projects in the finance and fintech sectors. Blockchain's transformative potential for financial services, such as decentralized finance (DeFi), smart contracts, and tokenization, aligns perfectly with London’s established expertise in finance. A blockchain development company in London can provide industry-specific insights and compliance knowledge that may be essential for your project.

3. Proximity to Blockchain Innovators and Events

London is a host city for some of the biggest blockchain conferences, summits, and networking events, including the London Blockchain Week and the Blockchain development company in London Expo Global. By choosing a blockchain development company based in London, you gain access to this thriving blockchain community, which can lead to innovative collaborations, exposure to the latest trends, and opportunities for partnerships.

4. Strong Regulatory Framework

The UK government and financial regulators, such as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), have embraced blockchain technology, establishing clear guidelines for its use in various industries. This regulatory clarity is crucial for businesses looking to build blockchain development company in London -based applications with confidence, especially in sectors that require strict compliance, such as finance, healthcare, and logistics. A London-based blockchain development company will be well-versed in these regulations, ensuring your project is compliant and secure.

5. Multidisciplinary Expertise

Blockchain development company in London technology is often integrated with other advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and big data analytics. Many blockchain development company in London have expertise in these fields, enabling them to offer holistic solutions that extend beyond blockchain alone. This multidisciplinary approach allows for greater innovation, whether you’re building a supply chain management platform or a decentralized marketplace.

6. Strategic Location for Global Business

London’s strategic location makes it an ideal choice for businesses operating across multiple regions. The city’s well-established transport links, international business connections, and a timezone that overlaps with both Eastern and Western markets provide an added advantage for companies seeking global reach. Collaborating with a blockchain development company in London ensures that your project will be managed efficiently, with easy communication and project management for global stakeholders.

7. A Proven Track Record

London’s blockchain development companies have a proven track record of successful implementations across various industries. From decentralized finance platforms to supply chain solutions and digital identity systems, London-based firms have demonstrated their ability to deliver cutting-edge blockchain development company in London projects. Their experience with both small startups and large enterprises makes them well-equipped to handle a wide range of blockchain applications.

>> Conclusion

Choosing a blockchain development company in London offers numerous benefits, from access to world-class talent and a supportive regulatory environment to proximity to financial expertise and industry events. Whether you’re launching a blockchain solution for fintech, healthcare, or supply chain management, partnering with a London-based firm ensures that you’ll have the resources, expertise, and industry insights necessary for success.

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Building Bridges: Essential Business Networking Events in London

In a city as dynamic and diverse as London, networking is the key to unlocking opportunities, fostering collaborations, and advancing your career. From connecting with influential figures to discovering new trends and technologies, London offers a range of networking events tailored to different industries and interests. If you're looking to build bridges and expand your network, here’s a guide to some of the essential business networking events in London, focusing on the best startup communities in the UK, the European startup ecosystem, and beyond.

1. London Startup Week: Connecting with the Best Startup Communities in the UK

London Startup Week is a must-attend event for anyone involved in the startup scene. This week-long festival showcases the best startup communities in the UK and offers numerous opportunities to network with founders, investors, and industry experts. With panels, workshops, and networking sessions dedicated to various sectors, including e-commerce startups, this event provides a comprehensive platform to engage with the startup ecosystem.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur seeking new connections or an investor looking for promising opportunities, London Startup Week is an ideal venue to build relationships and gain insights into the latest trends and innovations in the startup world.

2. TechCrunch Disrupt: Exploring the European Startup Ecosystem

TechCrunch Disrupt is one of the most renowned events for tech enthusiasts and entrepreneurs. Held annually in London, this conference focuses on the European startup ecosystem and attracts top innovators, investors, and industry leaders from across the continent. The event features startup pitches, keynote speeches, and panel discussions on the latest tech trends and business strategies.

TechCrunch Disrupt is an excellent opportunity to connect with key players in the tech industry, discover groundbreaking ideas, and expand your network within the European startup ecosystem. Whether you’re interested in learning about new technologies or finding potential investment opportunities, TechCrunch Disrupt offers valuable insights and connections.

3. E-commerce Expo: Networking in the E-commerce Startup Space

For those involved in the e-commerce sector, the E-commerce Expo is a premier event that brings together industry professionals, innovators, and entrepreneurs. This expo focuses on the rapidly evolving world of e-commerce startups and offers a range of networking opportunities through workshops, seminars, and exhibition halls.

Attendees can explore the latest technologies, discover new business strategies, and connect with key players in the e-commerce startup space. The E-commerce Expo is a valuable platform for building relationships and gaining insights into the future of e-commerce.

4. The Startup Conference: A Hub for the Best Startup Community for Entrepreneurs

The Startup Conference is renowned for its focus on the best startup community for entrepreneurs. This event features a series of keynote speeches, panel discussions, and networking sessions designed to support early-stage startups and entrepreneurs. Attendees can gain valuable insights into startup growth, fundraising, and scaling strategies.

With a focus on fostering connections and sharing knowledge, The Startup Conference provides a platform for entrepreneurs to engage with mentors, investors, and peers. Whether you’re looking to pitch your startup or seek advice on scaling your business, this conference is an essential event for building relationships within the startup community.

5. Networking at WeWork Labs: Leveraging Startup Community Platforms

WeWork Labs hosts regular networking events that cater to startups and entrepreneurs. These events are part of a broader startup community platform designed to support early-stage businesses and foster collaboration. WeWork Labs provides a collaborative environment where entrepreneurs can connect with mentors, investors, and other startups.

By participating in WeWork Labs events, you can gain access to valuable resources, share your experiences, and build relationships with other members of the startup community. It’s an ideal setting for those looking to connect with like-minded individuals and leverage the support of a vibrant startup community platform.

6. Virtual Networking Platforms: Connecting Remotely

In today’s digital age, virtual networking platforms have become essential tools for professionals looking to connect remotely. Platforms like LinkedIn, Zoom, and Hopin offer opportunities to engage with industry peers, attend virtual events, and participate in online workshops.

For those who prefer the flexibility of remote networking, these best virtual networking platforms for professionals provide a convenient way to expand your network and stay connected with the latest trends and opportunities. Whether you’re attending virtual conferences or participating in online meetups, these platforms are invaluable for building connections in the business network platform.

7. Business Network Platform: Enhancing Professional Connections

A business network platform is a crucial tool for professionals looking to build and maintain valuable connections. Platforms like LinkedIn and Meetup facilitate networking by allowing users to connect with industry peers, join relevant groups, and attend events.

By leveraging these platforms, you can enhance your professional connections, stay informed about industry developments, and discover new opportunities within the best startup communities in the UK and beyond. These tools are essential for anyone looking to expand their network and advance their career.

Conclusion: Building Bridges in London’s Networking Scene

London’s vibrant business landscape offers numerous opportunities for building connections and expanding your network. By attending these essential networking events and utilizing the latest startup community platforms and virtual networking tools, you can make meaningful connections that will support your professional growth. Whether you’re exploring the European startup ecosystem, engaging with e-commerce startups, or tapping into the best startup community for entrepreneurs, London’s networking events provide the perfect platform to build bridges and unlock new opportunities. Don’t miss out on these key events and platforms that can help you advance your career and achieve your business goals.