A new phase of the cafe is upon us

Good news café lovers! We have a new team in place to continue the wonderful Cheltenham tradition of social media café-ing(?).

Many of our regulars (and probably many more) will be familiar with the new bosses. Emily and Jonathan, who I still think of as @jonnop, will be officially in charge after tomorrow night. Huge thanks to Emily and Jonathan for taking this on and of course, we wish them luck for the future.

Emily will also be supporting me tomorrow with the ‘meet and greet’ which is lucky because I’m pretty bad at it. My counterpart, the acceptable face of the café Chris, also hopes to be there but has to get back from Manchester. Whether he can make it or not you’re sure to see both of us at future café events and other social media gatherings.

It’s been a privilege to be part of one of the earliest ‘tweet-up’ organisations in Cheltenham, a town that has a thriving and active online population. We’ve made friends and business contacts and we’ve enjoyed a lot of cake and cider along the way.

Cheers folks!

What I was trying to tell you all, is that Cheltenham Social Media Café will soon require new management. Chris and I don’t have the time to make the most of the cafe so we want to throw the opportunity open to other members of the community.

I’ve spoken to Linda and Katy at Pepper Crescent and they are happy to continue their association with the café under new management. That means all the new owner(s) would need to do is arrange the events, maintain the social media accounts and keep the blog updated. (Unless you decide to make a few changes!)

Pepper Crescent don’t charge for their time as enough drinks and cakes are sold during the events. Linda and Katy have always been very amenable and easy to deal with. The same can be said for our Twitter and Facebook followers – many of whom I’ve been able to speak with online and face-to-face which has been lovely.

If you’re interested or have a query please get in touch. You can email us at csmc@cheltsocialmediacafe.org.uk or catch up with us on Twitter or Facebook. I’ll be sure to keep you all up to date on our progress and I hope to see another good turnout for our last event on the 4th August.

Thank you all for making it a success!

Looking for tea and chatter?

Hello - We have an official date for the next café event so please put the evening of Thursday 4th August in your diaries!

From 6-8pm at Pepper Crescent, social media enthusiasts are welcome to gather, chat about work, life and all things digital, whilst drinking delicious cider, wine, coffee etc and eating cake. It’s a great opportunity to put faces to Twitter handles, spot the people who look like their avatar and generally socialise with other ‘geeks’.

Remember, it’s an informal meeting and although we provide optional name badges there’s no need for business cards or sales pitches. We’re open to people from any industry just so long as you’re interested (professionally or privately) in social media.

Now then, I’m off to set up the Facebook event page and tweet about this. Hope to see you there!

When the social media café began it was – in my view- a bit of a trail blazer. Now there are many Cheltenham-based tweet ups from casual one-offs, to regulars like our café, educational events like Digitalks and even tweet ups based around a common love of cake. Twitter, at least for Cheltonians, has become a giant community pin board as well as fulfilling other, non-geographic functions.

Were you there at the first café event? Do you remember when Andy Thorne and Holly Knowlman got together and came up with Foursquarestival? Or when a journalist came to learn about Cheltenham twestival? Have you received enlightenment in the form of Pepper Crescent cake?Or experienced relief knowing there was somewhere to socialise with good cider, coffee and NO business cards?

Dear café lovers, I know it’s been a while but please bear with us while we attempt to organise another amazing event just for you!

Pepper Crescent Cake

If you’re as much a fan of a cool glass of cider on a sunny day as I am then you’ll be glad to hear it’s almost time for SMC 7. Please add Thursday 5th May to your diaries because we’ll be taking over Pepper Crescent between 6 and 8pm for some vaguely geeky socialising.

If the April weather is anything to go by it’ll be sunny and tropical by the 5th May in which case most people will be drinking in the courtyard and scoffing exotic Pepper Crescent cake.

All-comers welcome, just remember to leave your sales pitches and business cards at the office. We do talk about work but all networking is informal. Café events are about putting the social back in the social media.

In the next few minutes I’ll be adding the event to our Facebook page (facebook.com/cheltsocialmediacafe) and, as usual, I’ll be tweeting about it from the @cheltsocmedcafe account using the #SMC7 tag.

If you can’t wait that long for cake and you’re reading this while Pepper Crescent is shut, here’s a great recipe I tried recently for Dutch apple cake.

I said geeks, not beaks!

After the manic night that was Cheltenham Twestival another, regular local event started changing shape. This post isn’t going to rake over the gory details – suffice to say that DigiTalks will live on and in a not too different format.

Originally these events were held sporadically with a primary focus on learning. Now, a new team has taken over with a plan to provide regular meetings, every other month. One event will be a learning opportunity with speakers, usually drawn from local businesses. Then, a week after the learning event, an informal ‘DigiDrinks’ will be held with the previous week’s speakers and attendees encouraged to turn up and talk about what they (hopefully) learned.

Last night the first informal event took place at Copa. I couldn’t attend but Chris did and by all accounts everyone had a good time and there seems to be a strong level of support for the future of DigiTalks.

With our cafe, #4sq4m and #TheMeet140 providing for those of a (slightly) less geeky persuasion I think it’s important to have events that cater for the classic sci-tech stereotype that is rightly flourishing in the ‘Nam.

I’m keen to give credit where it’s due but, like an Oscars acceptance speech, (or a follow friday listing) that could get very long and very dull. There are however, some people I cannot fail to mention – simply because I would feel incredibly guilty about it! Those are Jonathan Pollinger (head organiser), all the people from Grow, and the good folks at Firehoop, who (with the exception of myself) were responsible for the live broadcast which streamed to 185 countries.

I spoke with some lovely people, drank some delightful sultana daiquiris, ate some delicious half price Nasi Goreng without the pork and generally had a good time. A quick look at the Twitter stream today suggests that all 141 of the other people who attended had similarly fun experiences.

So – what do we think – can next year’s be even better? And will a new Cheltonian take on Jonathan’s mantle?

Jonathan has teamed up with local charity Grow, who aim to build community and to help vulnerable children and adults in Cheltenham feel significant, secure and accepted.

From 7.30pm ’til late (about 2am in fact) D’Fly is opening its doors for an evening of 2-4-1 cocktails, casino tables and live music from local talents including Saskia Gregory. Tickets are a bargain at £5 – that’s 6 1/2 hours of incredible entertainment for less money than a typical Cheltenham lunch!

You can buy tickets in advance here http://cheltenham.twestival.com
and all of your donation will go to Grow!

Enjoy a glass of wine with Cheltenham Social Media Cafe

Woohoo! Our next event is in the diary as the lovely folks at Pepper Crescent have confirmed our slot. From 6-8pm on Thursday 3rd March join us for coffee and cake (or maybe a glass of wine or Westons’ Cider) and some social media related chatter.

Guests and new faces are all welcome but remember - this is networking sans business cards. That means leave your sales pitch at the door! The event is free to attend and it’s a great way of putting avatars and twitter handles to real faces. It’s also worth it just for the mocha but we do encourage conversation too!

You can follow the café on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date with all our events, pictures and random ramblings. You can also search previous blog entries for our event write-ups which are useful for newcomers to get an idea of how they ‘work’.

It’s a timely reminder for us at the Cheltenham Social Media Café as we haven’t devoted much attention to social media lately. Work has been hectic and, although social media has remained a feature of our lives, it hasn’t really been given the attention it deserves. I am now on Foursquare. I still tweet from the café account. Today I also remembered to update the café’s Facebook status. And yet, it all seems a little half-hearted.

We hope to rectify this situation by recommencing our café events and the conversation with @peppercrescent has begun. In the meantime, don’t forget @jonnop has some wonderful and informative events coming up and he never takes as long as we do to get things moving!