Chinwag is an Internet community based in Soho

Soho

Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 (U.K.) consisting of new media

New media

New media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. For example, new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community...

 and digital marketing

Digital marketing

Digital Marketing is the promoting of brands using all forms of digital advertising channels to reach consumers. Digital marketing extends beyond Internet Marketing to include channels that do not require the use of the Internet...

 professionals.

Chinwag was founded in 1996 by Sam Michel (Internet consultant), and hosts several of the U.K.'s oldest known electronic mailing list

Electronic mailing list

An electronic mailing list is a special usage of email that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. It is similar to a traditional mailing list — a list of names and addresses — as might be kept by an organization for sending publications to...

s, including uk-netmarketing. These email lists form the center of the community and include contributions from many notable Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 pioneers and commentators including Bill Thompson

Bill Thompson (technology writer)

Bill Thompson is an English technology writer, best known for his weekly column in the Technology section of BBC News Online and his appearances on Click, a radio show on the BBC World Service. He is also an Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow at City University London .Born in Jarrow, Thompson grew...

,
Ivan Pope

Ivan Pope

Ivan Pope was involved with many early internet developments in the UK and across the world. He started networking in 1988 while a contemporary of Damien Hirst and the YBAs at art college in London. After graduation he went on to develop an early bulletin board systems for artists . Pope invented...

, and Brent Hoberman

Brent Hoberman

Brent Hoberman, together with Martha Lane Fox, founded Lastminute.com in 1998, an online travel and gift business that floated at the peak of the dot-com bubble and managed to survive the subsequent burst of the bubble....

.

A sister-site Chinwag Jobs was launched based on Chinwag's uknm-jobs e-mail list, an email-based announcement service for jobs within the Internet and digital media industries. Chinwag Jobs is a recruitment website, about which discussions have appeared in New Media Age

New Media Age

New Media Age is a weekly news magazine, covering business use of interactive media in the UK.New Media Age is owned by Centaur Media plc. It was launched as a newsletter in May 1995 under editor Phil Dwyer with reporters Nick Jones and Catherine Stewart...

.

Chinwag also hosts monthly events under the brand Chinwag Live. These events are informal, panel-based sessions focusing on issues affecting the new media industry. Past speakers include Andrew Orlowski

Andrew Orlowski

Andrew Orlowski is a British columnist for the online IT news and opinion website The Register.-Early career:In 1992, Orlowski started an alternative newspaper in Manchester, England called Badpress. He has also written for Private Eye magazine...

 of The Register

The Register

The Register is a British technology news and opinion website. It was founded by John Lettice, Mike Magee and Ross Alderson in 1994 as a newsletter called "Chip Connection", initially as an email service...

and Neville Hobson.
Chinwag is also known for its periodic, large-scale networking evenings.

The company also a series of trade missions for UK Trade & Investment

UK Trade & Investment

UK Trade & Investment is a UK Government department working with businesses based in the United Kingdom to ensure their success in international markets, and encourage the best overseas companies to look to the UK as their global partner of choice ....

, specifically design for companies operating in the digital sector. Digital Missions to date are:

• Digital Mission to Washington, 11-15 July 2011
• Digital Mission to New York, 1-5 November 2010
• Digital Mission to SXSW interactive, 11-17 March 2010
• Digital Mission to New York, 14–19 September 2009
• Digital Mission to SXSW interactive, 13–17 March 2009

External links

• Chinwag — Official website
• Digital Mission - Official Digital Mission website