Paradise Circus

As the FB invites and upcoming feeds will no doubt have informed you the December meet has a bit of a festive flavour — we’re going to go crazy on glühwein and sausages at Birmingham’s  Frankfurt Christmas Market.

Meet under the singing moose at any time after 6pm - Tuesday 9th December, retire to a local pub (the Wellington [EDIT- confirmed]) when you get too cold.

Singing Rudolph by roogi

Did you know they have a Birmingham Market in Frankfurt?

Unless you want to (which is fine)…

Facebook is rubbish, you get so many notification emails that when something comes along you want to know about it slips through the net. No-one’s suggesting that there won’t be FB events for Brum Bloggers meets sent out, but the bestest way is to use upcoming.org and the Brum Bloggers group therein.

You don’t even need to sign up for another site (even tho’ it’s good and it really helps if you go to a lot of gigs), just go along to the page and find the subscribe button.

There are a few options, RSS isn’t the best as you’ll get the events as soon as they get put up — leaving a month for them to slip your mind again, but iCal (for outlook, iCal and other calendars) or the option for Google calendar should be right.

You do need to join Upcoming.org if you want to post events (and join the group to add events to the Brum Bloggers calendar).

As you hopefully have heard, the Birmingham Bloggers’ meets are now taking place in the second week of the month, in order better intersect with the Birmingham Social Media Cafe now taking place on the last Friday of the month.

This means the next one is this Monday !

There’ve been a few requests to have the occasional meeting not in a pub, just to have a change of atmos - but annoyingly non-pub venues that are open on weekday evenings are a bit thin on the ground round here ! As the person with the keys to the safe this month, I’ve picked The Green Room, opposite the Hippodrome (Hurst Street); it’s more of a cafe bar than a pub, so hopefully will go some of the way to attract anybody who’s so far not come because of not liking meeting in pubs.

The usual plan applies - people start to turn up from around 6ish, but come whenever you’re ready, & leave when you feel the time is right.

Event pages on Facebook & on Upcoming

Have had a brill idea for a Brum bloggers event for Jan - how about one of Ben Waddington’s fab Type Tours, perhaps on a Saturday afternoon? I’ve mentioned it to him and he is up for doing one just for us, details tbc.

He did mention that winter tours are not very popular. I was thinking that people might like to get out and about a bit in the fresh air come January and work off our xmas indulgences, but thought I’d better canvas some opinion in case everyone would rather leave it til Spring?

Since we’ve always tried to keep the bloggers group fast moving and democratic, we never decide anything untill the last moment. That led to the meets gravitating to the end of the month - as no-one got round to oranising them.

Since the lovely, but sort of overlapping, Birmingham Social Media Cafe is meeting regularily in the last week of the month I think we should go for the second week. This is also good to not get all muddled in December and Jan.

So, in an unexpected rash of planning ahead I think we should set dates in advance and I’m proposing a rolling Mon-Thurs thing second week in the month.

Which would make November’s meet Monday 10th November and December’s  Tuesday 9th.

Maybe we should fix venues too? Any thoughts?

Twitter, while lovely, doesn’t really work for picking dates for things that everyone can do. So, prompted by something Dave Briggs tweeted (ah see, it does work, if even by proxy) I’ve set up a poll on a site called Doodle that tries to do if for you:

Pop over and cast your vote.

Why did I enjoy last night’s bloggers’ meet (ask me about the apostrophe) more than any other? It was partly because we did more than sit in a pub, partly because we did sit in pub and partly because new people came. However I think it was principally because the bloggers meetings are increasingly ripe with opportunity and optimism.

Jo Geary talked to the folk in the early part of the evening about Friday’s Birmingham Social Media Cafe, (time and venue here). For those who are new to the idea it’s inspired by the the principles and ambitions of the Tuttle Club in London, established by Lloyd Davis as a place/occassion where those professionally involved in social media can meet, share skills, knowledge, contacts, opportunities, invent and reinvent. I’m going to break my tuttle duck a week on Friday.

So Birmingham will tuttle thanks to Jo’s organisation and some coffee sponsorship from the Birmingham Post editor Marc Reeves. Why this excites me is who it brings to the city. Andy Dickinson is heading down from Lancaster to share his knowledge of video, it will be my first chance to meet Christian Payne, Paul Henderson is coming from Rural Net, Dave Briggs and I’m told, I think, Ewan McIntosh. (correction Ewanspence - Mr M is of course also handsomely welcome.) Obviously lots of other lovely people will be here too.

The evening also gave me a chance to catch up with Stuart Parker who has written here the blog post I would have composed had I said anything on this site about government plans to spend £300 million of laptops and broadband for the poorest. It echoes earlier arguments. Steve Cooper came for the first time and thought we were pretty friendly but expressed something I’ve heard a few times:

Bit difficult to really break into a group, still was my first time as an attendee but hopefully will get round to speak to more at the next one.

Steve also took some top photos of All the People in All The World, the Stan’s Cafe show which very kindly played host to us for our first hour or so. Jon Bounds and I provided them with www.thericeshow.com, a simple aggregator site for online reactions to the who. They added the statistic in the image above whilst we were there.

Other people it was good to see coming along were Brian Simpson and Simon Howes plus David Louis who blogs to support his product design business and is very passionate about Jewellery Quarter heritage. There were two people that bounder tells me were from www.diceproductions.co.uk, if you read this please remind me of your names! Other first timers who’s names or blogs I didn’t recall please let me know - praps leave a message.

I think the effort to do more than just go to a pub led to some who’d been reluctant to come, or come back showing more interest. I didn’t see either Bobbie Gardner or Kate Chapman, but I was delighted that they had said they would try and make it.

Any more ideas for events where we might meet very welcome. I know I haven’t mentioned everyone, so apologies and thanks all for such an enjoyable evening.

If you think you’ve read this before, you have. First posted here.

Tuesday September 23rd 2008.

PART 1: CAFE AT OF ALL THE PEOPLE IN ALL THE WORLD 6.30 PM - 8PM (AE HARRIS Northwood Street)

PART 2 8PM TILL WHENEVER - QUEENS ARMS PUB CHARLOTTE STREET.

This time we are meeting in two places, a show and then a pub. From 6.30 pm we are all more than welcome to meet in the cafe that has been set up to accompany Of All the People in All The World - also known as the rice show. Stan’s Cafe theatre company will be delighted to waive the £2.50 entrance fee to the show for any Birmingham Bloggers. (map) Also in the cafe at 7pm Joana Geary will be around to talk to folk about the first daytime meeting of Birmingham’s Social Media Cafe - which is next Friday. The location is below and the photo on this events page shows you want to expect to find when you get to AE Harris (see picture below).

The 2nd venue is a pub, the Queen’s Arms on The corner of Charlotte Street and Newhall Street (map). I’ve chosen this because a number of people have asked for venues a bit more convenient for railway stations and although this is 5 to 10 minutes walk from New Street it is nearer than other parts of the J Quarter. See pic below:

Shall we say Thurs 28th at a suitable location?

After a few twitter soundings I’ve stuck a pin in the 23rd of July for a meet-up this here month. As last months “turn up when the hell you like” worked well I vote we stick to it (there was a good spread of people, some from around 6, the majority there at 8 or thereabouts).

Sorry to those that can’t make it, we’ll see you soon (btw, is this a good argument for moving things round, so people who “can’t do Thursdays” etc.  can come every so often, or would a more rigid time suit?).

The Malt House (beloved of William Jefferson Clinton) gets a stormingly bad review here:  which means it’ll be nice and empty and easy to take over.

A good few of the bloggers will have been to WordCampUK over the weekend before, so if you’d like WordPressy questions answered this meet-up might be a good time.

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