Panasonic Imaging Event At The Dali Universe

Yesturday we were lucky enough to be invited to the Dali universe in London to meet with Panasonic at their imaging event.  The aim of the day was to discover a little more about the company and their aims and to also test some of their great new digital cameras and camcorders.

We left Weston-Super-Mare at 6 a.m (well 6.12 as the train was late!) and needed to change trains at Bristol temple meads at 6.40. This would have been simple if our first train had been on time! Fortunetly we only had to hop over one platform on arrival to Bristol so we made the train to London with seconds to spare.

The journey to London was only halted once (by sheep on the track) and we arrived early to Paddington station ready to tackle the London underground.  I have to say I do not often venture into London on the underground and found the experience of being crammed into a tube train like a sardine exciting but almost scary!  Country folk like me would look at a carriage crammed full of people and wait for the next one - Londoner’s just squeeze on in!  That said we arrived at Waterloo tube station with no problems and walked  a couple of minutes to our venue of the Dali Universe. 

As we were early we took some time to take in the sites, Panasonic had chosen wisely for the day as we could easily walk to big ben, the houses of parliament, the London eye, tower bridge and Buckingham Palace (to name but a few) so there was lots of things to photograph and film. 

When we arrived at the Dali Universe we were directed to the conference room where we met some representitives from Shinyred and some of the managers and engineers from Panasonic.  As we were the first people to arrive it gave us an opportunity to talk with people and play/review the cameras before any other blogger’s arrived.

The day started with some presentations from John Dixon (Panasonic brand communications), Mark Robinson (Panasonic Lumix UK) and Barnaby Sykes from Panasonic’s camcorder division. There was also a guest speaker from the Royal Yacht Association (Peter Bently) who discussed how Panasonic cameras are used to help coaching staff and also how the olympic games is going to filmed in HD by Panasonic. You can read more about these presentations at my gadget blog.

Next we were asked to choose a camera or camcorder to review, I chose the Panasonic HDC-SD9 to review becuase my current camcorder is a non high definition model and I wanted to measure the difference. Dave decided to go all out and review the top spec Panasonic L10 digital SLR camera.  Both reviews can be read on our gadgets blog.

Next we were told to go out to the pier because we would be taking a trip on a high speed rib along the river Thames! 

Once on board we cruised down the river and took in the sites, I took lots of video footage with a few stills using the camcorder and Dave took about 90 photos with the Digital SLR.  This was quite easy until the driver of the boat decided to floor it and bank heavily left and right all over the river - It was great fun but the footage was all over the place!

When we got back to dry land Panasonic had put on another PR event next to the London eye. Two jugglers were throwing, kicking and balancing the new SW20 shock and water proof camera to test its durability.

When we arrived back in the conference room Panasonic had laid on free refreshments for us and laptops and other media equipment was available to use - all of these little touches made the whole event run smoothly.   There was also opportunites to talk to the designers, engineers and PR team as well as other bloggers - it was a good opportunity to network with like minded people.

The whole event only took 4 hours and covered a great deal, if other manufacturers could organise events like these for bloggers I am sure they would get a lot more coverage. I certainly learned a lot from the day and look forward to future events.  Thank you Panasonic for our great day out in London and a huge thank you to Laura from Shinyred for the invite and all of your help on the day. You and the team did a great job at keeping all attendees happy - good job!

In the past I have put off going to events and lived to regret it after, if someone from your niche contact you to go to one of these events you should do your best to get there because you will meet new people, put names to faces and hopefully gain a fuller insight into your niche or product - also you might get some freebies which is always nice!

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