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 (probably the Wellington) when you get too cold.

Singing Rudolph by roogi

Did you know they have a Birmingham Market in Frankfurt?

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

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?

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.

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 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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Tickets are now on sale (at £35 or £70 if you’re feeling philanthropic) for the two days of Wordpress geekery that will be WordCamp UK. It’s to be held at The Studio (formerly the Orange Studio) just off New St in Birmingham. Saturday and Sunday 19th & 20th of July

Here’s the event on upcoming.

I’m trying to organise some sort of social events around the weekend, an informal drinky-poos for those in town on the Friday and something more involved on the Saturday night. Any ideas or offers of help are welcome (email me or have a splurge on the wiki). We should show these bloggers a good time in Brum if we can.