Paradise Circus

Last year the organised of Blog Action Day invited people to add a post to their blog about the environment, it was a huge success in terms of numbers. Blog Action Day is:

Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. Our aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.

This year the theme is poverty. While I’d encourage everyone to sign up and commit to writing a post from their own blog’s angle (just go over to the site and sign up) I’ve talked to a few other people and thought that it might be nice to have a co-ordninated effort from Brum.

Maybe we could pick a local organisation to focus on, get them some google juice, maybe even help them a little with getting into the social web as an organisation.

We’ve got ten days, so shall we have a talk about what we could do? Anyone got an organisation in mind?

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:

Here’s a thing that might be a cool thing for us to play with or might just fade away - one can never tell. It’s a chatbox widget called Talkinator and it can be embeded like so:

The neat thing is you can embed it in any website and the same chat will take place over all of them. This one is the Brumbloggers chatroom. If you fancy having it in your sidebar grab the code and stick it in.

Shall we say Thurs 28th at a suitable location?

I’ve written in the past about how I’m not entirely convinced about the proposed new location for the Academy (or Hummingbird, for those of us who’ve been here long enough to remember…), but at the same time pointing out the uncharitable attitudes of some of the people they will be neighbours to once they’ve moved.

Another perhaps-soon-to-be neighbour has managed to secure a court appearance in order to appeal against the licensing application:

But that licence is now under threat after Patrick McCrossan, who lives at nearby Clydesdale Tower, claimed having the venue on his doorstep would infringe his human right to a decent night’s sleep. He said the additional noise from the crowds, cars and cabs leaving after a night of live and loud rock music would make sleep impossible.

The ‘plight’ of people who move in to a house next to an airport, church, farm, or pub and then start complaining about the noise coming from them is, of course, well known.

But this is taking that situation to new extremes; an entertainment license is tied to the person running the venue rather than the venue itself, but the venue still has the use which can be made of it laid down in planning consent - the Dome has planning consent to be a nightclub, so whoever owns it, unless they are successfully granted change of use consent, the building will only ever be used as a nightclub.

Presumably when it was being run as the Dome itself Patrick McCrossan never had any trouble getting a good night’s sleep. If he did, he could have applied for a noise abatement order against the place.
So how will the site continuing to be used for the purposes it has been consistently used for for at least 30 years infringe his human rights?

After the heady excitement of WordCampUK, people have been forming localised WordPress groups. For us it would be WordPress Midlands.

The Flapper is to be demolished as part of a redevelopment and while I’m not surprised, I am bloody furious

Me and the Flapper have a chequered history; in my early teens a lot of my friends had there first gigs there, the cheap booze and out of the way nature of the place soon led it to be the perfect pre-XL’s stomping ground, and then a little later because of the rowdy circles I moved in the bar staff would phone the police if they so much as smelt our leather jackets as we swaggered past. Currently the Flapper is my secret bolt hole a quiet afternoon escape where I can take half an hour to watch the sun set over the canal.

But its not nostalgia or personal convenience driving the affront, it’s the creeping homogenisation of our city centre, a bleeding of every scrap of individuality and independent spirit, until Birmingham becomes just another yuppie temple of Mammon a bland glass pit stop on the road from London to Manchester.

We are doomed to live in a city of ubiquitous name brands. Fated to have to drink in identikit Wetherspoons or those hatful Ember Inns that are decorated in neutral coffee house banality designed not to appeal to anyone just as long as the don’t offend anyone either. Every music venue will be corporate sponsored and controlled by vacuous PR machines.

I’m not saying creativity will not survive in this atmosphere, it will. But that’s all it will be; surviving, not flourishing or growing, just a loose knit collection of people fleeing to the suburbs playing at local pubs to a handful of friends and a confused man with a dog.

The soul of any city is its culture; unfortunately this city’s soul is being sold to the redevelopment devil one “regeneration” at a time.

*written in a pub and posted with the help of the lovely bounder*

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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