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!

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.

But enough about the food and drink! Let me paint you a picture of our evening. Topics of conversation included social media strategy, a social media for financial services event that had taken place that day, holiday plans in Sienna, Yogi bear and mankinis as office wear. Of course that’s not an exhaustive account of what went on but I feel it offers a balanced perspective on the event.

Chris and I are considering the possibility of a Christmas special which may also include tapas. As time is now rather short, you may expect updates on this soon!

See you next time!

PS. Don’t forget these events are for putting the social back into social media – no sales pitches required!

You may have noticed that one half of the SMC team has been getting about a bit lately. @solutionmania was part of the organisation team for Cheltenham’s Super Swarm attempt and he turned up for DigiTalks and Jonathan’s Foursquare Forum. He really is the acceptable and sociable face of our Social Media Café!

For my part, I’ve nothing but excuses and the lack of a smart phone to explain my notable absences. On the plus side, I have been tweeting and blogging in a way which I hope is useful and interesting for #GlosBiz people (i.e. our followers – that’s you that is!) I’ll also be showing my face at ‘The Social Network’ on Monday evening (6pm at Cineworld, Brewery Centre) along with a few other ‘usual suspects’.

Just in case you want even more from us we’ve also set a date for the next café event. Whilst I realise it’s unlikely you’re desperate to talk to us and even less likely you’ll want to actually see us, I thought you might want an excuse to eat cake and drink Weston’s cider. I know, you probably don’t really need an excuse but we’re having the event anyway and you’re welcome to come along.

It’s on the 4th November which is a Thursday from 6-8pm at Pepper Crescent.

So, now you know I expect you’ll want to tell all of your friends by tweeting this URL! Thanks. We’ll see you there.

Good cake at Cheltenham Social Media Cafe

The title sums it up really! You can view photos from the evening at http://www.facebook.com/Cheltsocialmediacafe- thanks to Jonathan Pollinger for stepping into the breach and taking those.

Amongst our attendees there was a reporter from the Echo as well as plenty of returning guests and a few newbies. As usual Chris did a better job of circulating than I did but I managed to speak to most people throughout the night and everyone seemed to be having a good time. Plans are now afoot for the next one!

We were hoping to be joined by the man who’s just taken over the social media presence of our host venue Pepper Crescent. Sadly, he couldn’t make it on the night but their Foursquare specials have been revealed to us. You can get a free coffee when you check in there on Foursquare every Tuesday from 8-10am and the mayor gets a free cake each week. Chris currently holds the mayorship for that venue and was able to enjoy a free brownie at our cafe event.

If you’d like to get a free cake from the lovely Pepper Crescent then you’d better get over there and check in! If Foursquare is gobbledy-gook to you then you need to check out this post from Jonathan Pollinger.

Finally, I’d like to give a special mention to John Denley who turned up to celebrate his birthday with us before hitting the clubs. We hope you had a lovely evening!

Remember, you can follow us on Twitter as well as Facebook to keep up to date with our events and news, or subscribe to the blog for regular articles of interest. To search specifically for event details set up a Twitter search for #cheltsocmedcafe. See you soon!

By then many of you will be back from your summer holidays and ready to swap anecdotes and compare tans so it’s an ideal opportunity to catch up with old and new acquaintances. As yet there are no plans for any pre-café talks but you can drop us a line if you’re interested.

We’ll be tweeting reminders and updates about the event using the #cheltsocmedcafe hashtag so remember to set up your search column and use the tag if you’re mentioning the event too.

See you soon!

PS. Remember you can also follow us on Facebook – just visit www.facebook.com/Cheltsocialmediacafe to browse the events, pictures, status updates and valuable comments.

You can join us from 6pm for cake, drinks and chatter or come along at 5.30pm to see Jonathan Pollinger talk about the business benefits of using Foursquare.

We’re open to everyone – so long as you have an interest in social media and you’re happy to spend a few hours being sociable without giving any sales pitches! So far we’ve met lots of interesting, intelligent, charming and useful people so why not come along and be one of them?

Got any questions? You can post them here as a comment and someone will get back to you! Alternatively, talk to us on Twitter or Facebook.

The result? We have a new cafe event booked for the 8th July!

It’s another Thursday, from 6-8pm, with coffee, alcohol and cake on offer at Pepper Crescent. As usual, your comments and suggestions are welcome so feel free to get in touch using the comment box, email, Twitter or Facebook.

You can also find a few photos of the last event on our Facebook page which may encourage more new people to come along. (We are an attractive bunch after all!)

Remember, you don’t need to be an expert. All you need is to have an interest in social media, a free evening on the 8th July and an appreciation for networking without sales pitches. We look forward to seeing new and returning faces there!

From 6-8pm you are cordially invited to share the evening with us discussing social media with like minded souls and no sales pitches over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine!

We want our first get together to be an informal affair so that we can all get to know each other and find out what people want to learn. Some of you will probably be experts in various social media subjects but we’re expecting a lot of people who just know a bit and are looking to learn more.

 All levels of knowledge and experience are welcome – we’re looking for a good mix of people and you don’t need a Twitter account with 30,000 followers just to get in!

If you plan on attending please email / tweet us, add a comment under the blog post or RSVP on our Facebook Event Page to let us know.

We’d like to get a rough idea of numbers although people are welcome to just turn up on the night.

If you’re not sure whether to attend and you’re going to Digitalks at D’Fly this Thursday you can have a chat with Chris about our plans. He’d love to meet anyone interested in attending and he’ll be able to answer your questions in person which makes a nice change from DMing. Be warned though, he may talk for longer than 140 characters!

Spread the word

It’d be pretty awesome if people could spread the word about our meeting on the 25th March either by blogging, tweeting or even talking to their friends, family and colleagues.

We’d really love to see a load of people there ready to network and enjoy the brownies and semi-intellectual conversation on offer.

Please note – your Social Media Café needs you!