I’m delighted to announce that great local band Saskia Says will be playing for us.

Nina De Winter will be co-hosting.

Jonathan

Live music

Firstly we’re delighted to announce the second of our live acts. Cheltenham based Saskia Says will be performing an exclusive live set for your musical entertainment. We hope you enjoy! You can also follow @saskia_says on Twitter or find them on Facebook.

Here’s a taster from their EP – an acoustic video of the track ‘Nicer Version of Me’.

Nicest Version of Me by Saskia Says on YouTube.

Social media round up

Jonathan and I will be giving a very brief and light-hearted up date of all the social media news and developments over the last month. Please do feel free to chip in and offer up and news you’ve heard.

Food

Our lovely hosts, Pepper Crescent will be recreating the wonderful Tapas menu for you again. So for those of you that prefer something savoury with your wine, beer and cider, Linda and Katy will offer their special ‘Social Media Club’ Tapas Nibbles menu. Be sure to bring some extra pennies so you can sample some! You don’t even have to remember to have dinner before you come out now.

After party

For those of you that like to continue the jollity past 8pm, we will again be making our way to D’Fly for the After Party. This is nothing formal and is basically just means that those who aren’t ready to go home can wander a few meters round the corner and carry on socialising.

Don’t forget to take lots of photos and tweet about Social Media Club with the hashtag #wearesocialclub.

We’re really looking forward to seeing you on Thursday – turn up from 6pm to Pepper Crescent and bring all your friends.

Emily & Jonathan

Live music

Firstly we’re very excited to announce our first live act providing musical entertainment for you. Singer, songwriter Ags Connolly will be joining us and we’re delighted that he’ll be playing a short set of his own original music plus a few possible covers. He’s coming all the way from Oxford to be with us so make sure you give him a shout out on Twitter if you like what you hear. Personally we think he’s Oxford’s answer to Bob Dylan. We hope you enjoy!

Check out Ags Connolly’s music on MySpace

Tapas

Now, we’ve been speaking to our lovely hosts, Pepper Crescent to make sure we’ve got the best mix of food and drink available for you whilst you chatter. So for those of you that prefer something savoury with your wine, beer and cider, Linda has developed a special Tapas Nibbles menu for us. Be sure to bring some extra pennies so you can sample some!

Social media round up

Jonathan and I will be giving a very brief and light-hearted up date of all the social media news and developments over the last month. No need to bring a notebook though and we’re happy for you all to chip in with other news you’ve picked up.

After party

This is just another reminder that for those of you that like to continue the jollity past 8pm, we have arranged an After Party meetup in D’Fly. This basically just means that those who aren’t ready to go home can wander a few meters round the corner and carry on socialising. There’s nothing formal, just a place to head to afterwards.

Lastly, we’ve heard that there might be a few new faces on Thursday. This is great news and everyone is welcome. Be sure to take lots of photos and tweet using the hashtag #wearesocialclub.

We’re also very excited to have Phil from All in the Image covering the event for us. Make sure you’ve got your best frocks on! We’re both really looking forward to seeing you tomorrow – turn up from 6pm to Pepper Crescent.

Emily & Jonathan

You may have noticed a few changes around here lately. There may be a subtly different name and a new identity but we’d like to take this opportunity to thank Chris and Rachel for all their hard work over the last few years building this event up into what it is today.

This hard work and effort has provided me and Jonathan with a vibrant group of people and we want to make sure it evolves how you want it to.

Our main aim is to provide a place for people who interact on social media to meet face-to-face. We want the Social Media Club to be a great night out for YOU. That’s why we’re working closely with Pepper Crescent to find the perfect recipe for the event. We’re working on introducing live music, savoury bar snacks and an after-party!

Feeling Good from Alex-Andre on Vimeo.

The After-Party

We realise that some folk do like to stay on to drink and chat post 8pm (me included!). So, we have designated D’Fly as the official after-party venue. For those that want to continue the chatter, we’ll head around the corner at 8pm. And those that want to grab a bite to eat, can also do so in D’Fly.

We think it will benefit everyone if we can increase the reach of the event. We’re open to all new ideas and welcome your input. We’re hoping you’ll like the new Social Media Club that much that you’ll want to invite all your mates! So, please do get in touch and let us know if you think there’s something else we can add into the mix. Either tweet us @wearesocialclub or drop us an email.

The Next Event

Our next meetup is Thursday 29th September, in Pepper Crescent from 6pm – moving to D’Fly from 8pm. Each event after that will be the last Thursday of every month (with a break in December). There may be times when we have to waiver from that pattern, but we thought it would be helpful for you to know dates in advance so you can add them to your diary.

Don’t forget, Social Media Club is completely free to attend, run by volunteers and kindly hosted by Pepper Crescent. Oh, and the first rule of Social Media Club? You DO talk about Social Media Club.

See you soon and spread the word: it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day!

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!

Rob Mason is giving a presentation on HTML5 and Css3 translating them into practical, real-world applications. The second speaker is Sheldon Whitney who wants to enlighten you about Cloud and mobile computing.

The event is aimed at ‘geeks’ but don’t worry if the topics are new to you as there will be an opportunity for asking questions of both speakers during the evening. A more sociable, follow up session is planned for Thursday 19^thMay to make sure attendees get the chance to ask even more questions and discuss their learning over another pint.

You can keep up to date with Digitalks events by following them on Twitter @DigiTalksChelt or search for the hash tag #digitalkschelt. Facebookers can also find them at www.facebook.com/digitalks.cheltenham