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On Thursday evening I was privileged to attend the first AdMonsters event of 2007, this time a cocktail & dinner evening at Axis / One Aldwych. One Aldwych is a hotel not too far from Temple tube station, ‘Axis’ is one of their restaurants (a rather nice one). This online advertising operations event was, as usual, pretty popular - a few familiar faces from agencies and publishers were present to discuss the daily grind facing us all in delivering online advertising efficiently and effectively.

I managed to catch up with a systems optimiser from Doubleclick, an online business analyst from AOL, ad traffickers and managers from FT.com, Condenaste and German company Tomorrow Focus. It was of course an entertaining evening, not only based around serious work matters, but other important issues such as the price of houses, marriage, Africa, Jade Goody, David Beckham and cash for honours.

This Doubleclick sponsored evening certainly had a fantastic choice of venue, the staff at Axis were polite and courteous. I felt completely safe handing over my laptop and coat in the cloakroom (normally I hang on to the laptop… so that demonstrates my ease). Inside the restaurant the décor was modern and spacious, the rooms large and filled with diners. Nice comfortable padded seats sat around a large circular table containing an enormous glass bowl/vase containing water and pink flowers.

Mussel soup was our starter, not my usual choice I have to say but it was pretty good, the mussels were certainly nowhere near as rubbery as those sold in Sainsburys in their ‘seafood pack’! The venison for our main course, with creamy mashed potato and mushrooms, was incredibly tasty despite the power of the white wine flowing from the never-ending wine glass. At first it seemed the side dishes of boiled potatoes and vegetables was a bit stingy for the eight people on my table, but there was some left when we’d all eaten our fill so they obviously had that right.

Can’t say I was too keen on dessert, the chocolate cake was divine but the accompanying ice-cream didn’t suit my taste buds. At least there was a cheese board to come with grapes and cream crackers, and of course the obligatory coffee. The evening was so enjoyable that when I saw somebody leaving and checked my watch I couldn’t believe it was 11pm already – I just had time to catch the last train from Victoria.

Technorati Tags: axis, one aldwych, admonsters, doubleclick, temple

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