Paradise Circus

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).

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.