Last night I had the pleasure of going to the NMK Beer and Innovation 2: User Generated Content event. Richard Sambrook, Director of BBC Global News Division and Paul Youlten, Founder of Yellowikis.org, gave plenty of food for the audience to chew on, whilst our very own New Media Awards judge Jo Twist, brought her own experiences as the chair.

Much of the evening was centred on new issues for media companies that have arisen in the last year thanks to a greater democratisation of technology and internet usage. But, as interesting as this all was, the highlight for me was meeting with people who are working and setting up new businesses in new media and technology at the moment. I shall take the liberty to list them here:

• Yellowikis - Yellow Pages meets Wikipedia, all set up by a fifteen year old and her dad.
• JigsawUK - a community and business resource for the growth of British digital media (which sounds a bit dull, but have a look at all the spangly new projects they have listed in their internet section alone. It feels like 1999 all over again.
• WebKitchen - a new start-up being run by Peter Nixey
• Chinwag - with their recently launched a jobs website, and who already appear to have been nominated for a New Media Award.
• It was also good to see folks from UpMyStreet - where would most home owners and movers be without them these days?

We shall be keeping an eye on you all.