Other than new attendee  CurvesRuth being the lone female of the group, the atmosphere did feel far more über-geeky (in a good way) than usual, although there were early discussions of under or over toilet roll, and grounds for divorce including tucking trousers into socks, talking to an air hostess in a funny voice and being nearly naked stranded on the M25. The other new attendees were  DougieLawson (who has been invited to just about every bsktweetup in the last two years, appeared as a Maybe for some of them but had never shown up until yesterday),  Scytm0 and  ekithump.

Attendees were:

•  CurvesRuth – Ruth
•  davehornsby – Dave
•  DougieLawson – Dougie
•  ekithump – Paul
•  GaryJ – Gary
•  jas4cad – Jason
•  jonno08 – Jon
•  novelnovacom – Barry
•  Scytm0 – Ian
•  surferbill -Terry

The next #bsktweetup is the 9th June 2011, 8pm, Red Lion Hotel, Basingstoke.

1. First up, is to follow  bsktweetup on Twitter – this is our primary (unsurprisingly) way of communicating with potential attendees. If you’re following us there, short of us getting lost in amongst tweets from others you follow, this should be enough!
2. We use Twtvite to handle the invites of who’s coming to a particular event, so if you do see us tweet a link to there, then please add your RSVP (even if it’s a Maybe) – Twtvite will automatically send you a reminder one week, and one day, before the event is due to start.
   The URL format for our twtvites is usually http://twtvite.com/bskt + the number of the event – however, you can visit our Twtvite page to see our next upcoming event.
3. The invite is also embedded on the sidebar of this website, so add http://bsktweetup.info/ to your bookmarks and you’ll always be able to RSVP (and please do – it saves me having to manually update the guest list for every single person!).
4. As well as Twitter, we also have a Facebook page, so go and Like it, and we can then send you reminders of the event!
5. Just for completeness, we often have a Facebook event, with the same details as the Twtvite, linked to the Facebook page. This event is also linked from the sidebar on this website, just under the Twtvite box.
6. For consistency, we always meet on the second Thursday of each month – stick that on your calendars as a recurring event, and you’ll always know when the next one is coming up!
7. Speaking of calendars, there’s a Google-Calendar-based iCal that you can subscribe to: http://bsktweetup.info/ical is a tidy alias for it. That has the advantage that should an event be cancelled for any reason (unlikely, as at least one person will always be there), we can update it.
8. For occasional tweetups, we also add our tweetup to event listings on local-based sites, like Destination Basingstoke or the Basingstoke Gazette.
9. Lastly, there is the blog RSS feed. Posts aren’t made before each and every event, as we feel there’s enough methods for people to get reminders already, but if you subscribe, then you might also get to find out about other related news too!

Which of these reminder methods do you use?
Do you follow  bsktweetup?
Have you Liked our Facebook page?

The attendees were:

•  barkythesparky – Alex
•  ClearBreezeD – Hannah
•  davehornsby – Dave
•  detectivelex – Alexa
•  dkplewis – David
•  GaryJ – Gary
•  icicle_halo_ – Keely
•  interact4future – Jamie
•  jas4cad – Jason
•  Jazzbullie70 – Amanda
•  jpratchett – Jon
• Juliet (not on Twitter, yet)
•  MattySelfish – Matt
•  Mediakinetic – Lindsay
•  NettMore – Lawrence
•  novelnovacom – Barry
•  perfectverse4u – Jan
•  surferbill – Terry

Everyone stayed for a long while, and most of the new faces said they would come back again. Add in the five or six people who couldn’t make this month’s tweetup and said they would come another time, and we may need to think about finding a bigger venue! (On that note, we did have someone from the Basingstoke Hilton hotel trying to tempt us over there for our tweetups!)

Did you attend Basingstoke Tweetup #25? Did you enjoy it?

On April 14th (later this week), Basingstoke Tweetup celebrates it’s 2^nd birthday.

Lots of folks local to Basingstoke have been invited, so we hope to see a few new faces come to their first #bsktweetup at the Red Lion Hotel in Basingstoke. There’s no cost, so if you’re interested, please just turn up and introduce yourself!

For further details, see the event invite where you can RSVP, so we know to look out for you.

Original image copyright: bright media.

In that time, we’ve also had 18 people with Twitter accounts come to at least one event, with another two or three as guests for the evening. There’s also been several people who have made contact and said they are interested in coming to a meet (either through @bsktweetup or through our Facebook page) but have yet to show up. Organiser Gary Jones would love to see more people there.

“We’re always encouraging new users to attend, to just come along and try the event out. We’re in the same place on the second Thursday of each month, so there’s no confusion about turning up to find no-one else there.” said Gary. “Our twitter account currently has 159 followers, so even allowing for some non-human and non-local followers, that’s still about 100 people who have considered coming along or otherwise interested in what we do.”

The first event was covered by the local newspaper, and attendance for the early events was around 12 people. Gary would like to see the number of core attendees rise back up to those numbers.

“The more people who attend the better the evening goes. It’s more social, with more people to chat to and more conversations going on at the same time.” insisted Gary. “Conversation topic are wide ranging as we focus on being a social group of friends and not limit ourselves to any one area.”

The next tweetup will be on the 9th September 2010, at the Red Lion Hotel in Basingstoke town centre. You can find event details and RSVP on the invite.

Original image copyright: Daisy Bliss.