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 Ewan Spence – 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 written Had I said anything on this site about government plans to spend £300 million of laptops and broadband for the poorest. (For some of my thoughts see here and here.)Steve Cooper came for the first time and thought we were pretty friendly but expressed soemthing 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 and my eternal gratitude to Jules for depositing me at my front door.
Update: I’ve just found Ben’s blog, he who merged three meets into one. It was a pleasure to meet you.
September 24th, 2008 at 3:48 pm (#)
Louis Hudson and Ian Ravenscroft of Dice Productions came down too.
Agree it was a particularly good meet-up. I might even put down some thoughts of my own at some point.
September 24th, 2008 at 4:01 pm (#)
[...] If you think you’ve read this before, you have. First posted here. [...]
September 24th, 2008 at 4:12 pm (#)
I’ll try and get a few more images on the site. I didn’t capture too many people though, just the rice. Got a few shots in the dark in the basement. I posted them on the facebook page.
Shameless plug —> http://www.scphoto.co.uk/pages/galleries/projects/riceshow.html
Apologies for it’s slow upload, one day I’ll use a proper host instead of my home broadband.
Anyway, glad I turned up. And nice to see/meet a number of the faces I’ve read about.
Also really enjoyed the exhibition, I actually thought I’d missed it. I do fancy going along again with my tripod to get more images.
September 24th, 2008 at 4:35 pm (#)
Re: your picture…
TBL, inventor of what?!?
September 24th, 2008 at 4:40 pm (#)
I’m thinking Mr Berners Lee brought us the world wide web. If you tweet @thericeshow they can either justify or correct.
September 24th, 2008 at 7:47 pm (#)
[...] Podnosh has a report on the Birmingham cafe/pubmeet, and Stuart Parker (of North Birmingham Social Enterprise) has comments on a discussion there about the government’s new vote-buying handouts initiative to spend £300-million of taxpayers money on free laptops+broadband for 7-19 year-olds whose parents are on the dole… “It’s not about the access […] I chatted with Nick Booth last night about the situation and we drew similar conclusions about what should actually be happening with that money. It should be providing training, guidance, communication, advice etc delivered by the people with the right skills and attitude […] Our project is in the throws of equipping these mentors with the kind of knowledge and skills that will benefit those excluded from the digital community. Hopefully before too long, those who make the decisions will be aware of what’s actually going on and who knows, maybe do something about it.” [...]
September 24th, 2008 at 7:54 pm (#)
Gutted I couldn’t be there.
I will def try and make the social media cafe though.
Glad everyone is buzzing about last night’s meetup.
B
September 25th, 2008 at 2:57 am (#)
[...] I was chatting to a blokes at last night’s Birmingham bloggers meet who seemed to be suggesting that the university is opening up a photography gallery in Eastside (I think he even said Curzon Street Station). [...]
September 25th, 2008 at 9:32 am (#)
Sorry I couldn’t make it, but tomorrow is definitely on – my first (and only so far) Tuttle sparked this http://www.sustainablewidget.com/ it’s all good
January 3rd, 2009 at 7:10 pm (#)
[...] Birmingham Bloggers met. [...]