Paradise Circus

When we came up with the bright idea of having a picnic in Moseley Private Park for the next meeting during the 3-day heatwave of early May, we didn’t foresee being in the middle of a wetwave, so hastily made a backup plan of the Prince of Wales.

As well as myself, the following people also turned up at various points during the evening (in approx order of appearance):

Nick Booth, Jon Bounds, Clare Edwards, Simon Gray, Andy Mabbett, Mark Steadman, Kevin Rapley, Danny Smith, Matt ?, Stuart ?, Ana Milgram, Nikki Pugh, Chris Unitt and friend, Stef Lewandowski, Emma Jones, Antonio Gould and friend, two random Polish ladies and Caroline Charlton. (Feel free to fill in the gaps peeps)

The venue was quite good because it has a back room which was a good size for the group with room to grow a little. Drinks selection and prices were good. They serve food and also have a kind of delicatessen out back which is quite incongruous, but good nevertheless. The management are friendly. The day we went, a Wednesday, happened to be quiz night, which we took part in and was quite fun, we even got a curry chucked in with the £1 entry fee. No public wifi. There’s a bit of free parking on the road in the evenings.

As well as the usual general meeting interesting people and socialising, the following ideas came out of the meeting:

This website, Paradise Circus.

Jon reckoned that technology is just about ready for a live phone-in show on the web. Mark, Danny and Kevin agreed and they’re hoping to get together soon. It will no doubt be very rude!

Stuart chatted to people about wanting to break down divides around the use of social media by adults.

We learnt a Polish song about drinking too much beer that went something like “Storya! Storya!”

Please add anything I’ve missed in the comments. I’ve created a new WordPress Page to put venue reviews as this could be a really useful resource. Any Pages (as opposed to individual Posts) could act as a wiki, ask if you want a login.

First of all I want to point out that I am writing this at the sacrifice of the three hundred other more urgent writing tasks cluttering my desk top, look grateful internet.

My main problem, as referenced in the earlier post, with the name “Birmingham Bloggers” (clumsy alliteration aside) is not so much with the creaky and antiquated term “blogger”, if I write on a blog then surly I am a blogger lofty aspirations of journalism or no. There is certainly a case to be made that “blogging” has become a default catch all term to do with any content produced for the, or disseminated by the internet that even smell slightly 2.0. So if blogger I am called, then blogger I shall be.

Now this would seem that I have a problem with “Birmingham”, I want to make very clear that I am a massive Birmingham fan, not just the football team, which I was also dragged up to slavishly follow the results of. But the city; its people, culture, colour and character (now THAT’S good alliteration). I’m very proud of coming from Birmingham, maybe not Northfield where I grew up, but defiantly Birmingham.

Unfortunately so is everyone else, we as brummies tend to be so obsessed with competing for the largely fictional “Second City” status, so much that it ends up coming round and biting us in our perfectly formed backsides. One of the symptoms of the “Second City” fever is the curious predilection of naming everything with some permutation of Birmingham or “Brum”. This strikes me as a little short sighted and somewhat restricting considering that all the smaller satellite cities like Dudley or Wolverhampton are within commuting distance and the internet can be said to be making geography largely irrelevant anyway.

If we look at the hallowed London which inevitable people will do, ventures their rarely mention London or any of its boroughs, they seldomfeel the need. Even if by announcing our proud Birmingham roots in our names is a rejection of the London model, it is still a reaction to London, which in a way, placing London on a pedestal. If we are to compete with other cities (which is a weird concept in it self worthy of a more elaborate post) then we need to drop the inferiority complex.

That is not to say the amount of creative amusement we are missing, the best part of being in a school band was the naming in my opinion, limiting ourselves to having to include the schools name into the title takes away fun.

That is not to say there is inherent value in blowing our own trumpets, sites like B:ins made specifically to re-address the balance in a light hearted way are a good example, but lets not it seep into every corner of our creative output.

Que argument; …………now

Groups of Birmingham Bloggers have been meeting in a kinda formal/informal way for a few months now. Mostly orgainised around the Facebook group, which has worked — up to a point.

Facebook is sort of broken at the moment (for this sort of thing, for this group) because:

• Lots of us are not using FB so much anymore, as we spend so much time on twitter. Twitter’s great for ad-hoc meetings, but not good for organising event events.
• We can’t make anymore people group admins — which is nice for the de-centrist non-hierarchical way we want to be.

I (me, Jon) resisted a website for the group because I thought that it wasn’t as democratic as using FB, but talking to Andy Mabbett and Stef Lewandowski (amongst others) at the meet-up in the Prince last night I realised I was being a bit odd. So, any Brum (or nearby) Blogger is welcome to admin rights to this site. dm me on twitter/email with email address for your very own account.

So why Paradise Circus? Well, since the very beginning of meeting up we’ve not been happy with the “Birmingham Bloggers” term. Some thought that it excluded other with not-so-much blogging social media activities (podcasters, heavy flickr users, tweeters, and so on), Birmingham is a little odd as a term too as most people don’t blog about brum (and there are a few wider WM attendees), and Danny Smith hated the word blogger.

Yeah, but why Paradise Circus? It’s nice, it sounds like a lovely and lively mess of things happening, it radiates democratic love, it’s uptopian, it’s a lovely big road island, it’s a Lilac Time album. And if/when the council (with architectural vandalism aforethought) knock the current building (pictured left) down we might be able to flog the URL to new corporate owners…

Site is totally unfinished, comments, suggestions (page with free wifi map on?), help, more posts… well, join up and get going.