It was with great expectation that I packed my bags, the networking dinner everyone has been talking about was just a few hours away and all that lay ahead for me was the long open road from Plettenberg Bay to Cape Town.

Lucky my trusty fringmobile was all warmed up and the journey wasn’t that long after all. After only a few hours I arrived in the mother city, found my lodging and got some much needed rest.

This year we found ourselves at a new venue, the Deerpark cafe’ near Table Mountain National Park.

The air was filled with excitement as Dave Duarte welcomed everyone to this months 27 Dinner, Users where encouraged to exchange business cards and make friends. Dave continued by telling us why these gatherings where so important, he mentioned the example of a South Africa guy who set up fake profiles on the net, Blogged about himself and ripped off hundreds of people locally. The 27Dinner is an event that lets people network, it is a safe way to meet others mainstream Bloggers and techies and you go home with real contacts and not just virtual flyby nights.

Later the evening, Phil Barret of Userexperiance presented a great talk about making an application user friendly, he showed that many new users where using the net including “grannies and nuns” and that applications had to be easy to use for these new users, he went on to pointing out that most companies fold because they launch when their applications are not user friendly.

Another key speaker was Randolf Jorberg, who talked about the wonders of affiliate marketing. Randolf is the face behind anonym.to ranked 190th on Alexa.com

After the talk’s fring got great feedback from people like Jason of Zoopy who complimented fring on how easy the application was to install and use, Maximillian Kaizen was over joyed to hear that fring supported Twitter and wished that fring would soon support her Sony Ericson, Max your wish is our command

All in all the Dinner was a huge success, with valuable lessons learned and great new friends and contacts made.

Thanks to Brandon Golding for taking a few great pics.