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Asking for feedback

Wayde Christie—21st September, 2008 | 27 Comments

Hi folks,

While Bits & Pixels has been great, it's really not progressed since it's inception 12 months ago. We've had many discussions about improving it along the way, but that third Saturday comes around each month and we've had exactly zero time to put anything into it.

Don't be alarmed – Bits & Pixels is here to stay, but it's just getting a little stagnant is all. That's where you come in!

We're calling for feedback, ideas, and anything you can think of that will improve B&P. Here's some ideas I had in the shower this morning:

A B&P 'Working Group' or committee. Maybe a couple of our members would like to be involved with marketing or PR.
A regular speaker.
An agenda
A change of location (particularly since the Grand no longer stocks Golden Ale and have increased their prices).

Members of other industry meet-ups like the WSG or the Newcastle Coders Group might have some great insights, so we'd love to hear from those people.

Something that was discussed briefly this month was the possibility of a B&P Christmas event. Dinner, lawn bowls, a Guitar Hero challenge or all three were ideas Any feedback on an end of year gathering would be great also.

Bottom line is, we love Bits & Pixels and we really enjoy meeting new like-minded people from the area, so it would be a shame for our little get-together to vanish into obscurity. So please, if any of you have some input, no matter how small, we'd love to hear it.

Cheers

UPDATE: A running list of suggestions is probably a good thing.

Here's what we've got so far:

An agenda
Speakers
Bi-monthly (every 2 months) instead of monthly meetings
Contacting local business groups
Producing an e-newsletter
Free stuff
"Bring-a-Web-Friend" incentive
Workshops

Comments (27)

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What!? The Golden Ale’s gone… where’s my pitchfork?

Agenda would be good - with a presentation? Would mean we’d have to have some accommodating facilities.

Perhap reducing the gatherings to bi-monthly. As in every two months - not twice a month

Might give the meetings more substance.

The Mattara would be a sweet Christmas venue - and would allow me the opportunity to stumble home!

Paul Hempsall—21st September, 2008 at 11:52am | Permalink

Thanks Paul. I reckon you’re maybe right on the bi-monthly thing - particularly in terms of substance. I am at the point where I feel that B&P comes around too quickly and as a result I have very little to talk about - and absence makes the heart grow fonder as they say

Some kind of agenda would be great, and we’ve tried it in the past (although rather unsuccessfully).

I think marketing is an issue - we really need a concerted and *regular* push in that department. Having 30 people show up two meetings in a row would force us into action for sure, but when numbers are dwindling we’re likely to get a bit too comfortable, and no growth will come from that.

I’ll continue to update this post as ideas come in, so please keep them coming!

Wayde Christie—21st September, 2008 at 12:42pm | Permalink

Something which has come up several times is the possibility of opening the meetings up to local business people. The idea would be to host a quarterly networking event for local businesses and B&P members. This is based on the Open Coffee Club idea, which in their words was started to “encourage entrepreneurs, developers and investors to organise real-world informal meetups to chat, network and grow”. Perhaps we could looking at hosting the first one in Australia…

Sponsorship is also something we should further explore.

Becoming an Adobe User Group would be great also.

So many ideas - so little time… :(

Wayde Christie—21st September, 2008 at 12:57pm | Permalink

Hey Wayde,

Have you thought about contacting the Newcastle Business Centre? They were pretty helpful when I contacted them about my own business, and they’ll have on their books lists of local web people looking to network so they’d be able to email them for you..

Also what about an e-newsletter? like the http://www.crugroup.com.au/ one? They combine special offers/business news with also information about Internet Marketing and improving your business, plus they look pretty funky so you don’t mind reading them…

Also getting out to more like minded people and businesses is probably going to help. Obviously I don’t know what Marketing/PR you’re currently doing but I’m sure there’s always more to be done be-it getting in contact with uni tutors, sole traders, people working from home, or web students looking to learn about more up to date methods…

Hope this helps

Amanda Cole—21st September, 2008 at 1:45pm | Permalink

Some of the things that are in my head

* I agree with bi-monthly

* Definitely an agenda (with a free-for-all in there somewhere)

* Free stuff - who doesn’t like free stuff?

* Bring-a-Web-Friend incentive (I have some offers up my sleeve)

* A working group would be good

* Presentation

* Workshop

* I think the venue is grand

Joel R.—21st September, 2008 at 1:53pm | Permalink

@Amanda � some great ideas, thanks

@Joel � Great ideas from you too. A couple of questions though.

1. What kind of incentive for the ‘Bring a web friend’ did you have in mind? Free t-shirt? That kinda thing?

2. Workshops, although a great idea, would definitely cost money. Do you think an Adobe certified presenter for example, talking on topics like Flash etc., might go over well? Well enough for attendees to cough up a few dollars to make it happen?

Wayde Christie—21st September, 2008 at 2:07pm | Permalink

Glad to be of assistance

With the workshops, I guess they could even be less formal than a full workshop, more of a tutorial/discussion type thing. Possibly even a case study, focussing on technologies of choice, platform selection, etc. I guess it’d all be in aid of learning something.

I don’t think it would be wise to charge just yet. The Adobe type ones would be more like special events, etc marketed in addition to the core B&P;gathering.

Bring-A-Nerd/Web-Friend incentive - yep, t-shirt, Pat Cash headband, or special offers (sponsored).

Joel Roberts—21st September, 2008 at 5:50pm | Permalink

Better late than never ... here’s some thoughts.

I think we should have some presentations of some kind, start small and as it grows we could invite industry experts that wouldn’t have otherwise attended to give talks too. That would be a drawcard, and I’d like to hear about projects that the other people there have worked on, the lessons learned, technologies used etc.

For waht it’s worth I agree with the idea of having the event bimonthly.

Is this something that people want to get bigger? I remember one of the comments on Saturday was that a bigger event would mean more work. Maybe volunteers could help with the extra work if there was any.

Or ... perhaps growth is not the primary concern ... and that’s cool. I kinda like it small and informal actually. Can’t help think that if it were run by committee that things would stagnate.

About 6 months ago there was a B&P;event with about 20 or 30 people there, it was impossible to talk to them all. The meetings would definately need more structure if there were larger numbers of people attending.

Andrew Goodwin—22nd September, 2008 at 4:24pm | Permalink

I forgot to mention, you could send out an email a couple of days before the event, reminding people it’s on, where it is, what the agenda is, etc. I get this for another Newcastle event and it works brilliantly as I can see if it’s worth going to and I also don’t have to remember it’s on - they remember for me

Joel Roberts—25th September, 2008 at 10:43am | Permalink

I agree, an email reminder would increase the attendance for sure. Clean missed the last one as I was unsure of the date, that and Saturday was just a stand out day weather wise.

Bi-monthly is fine, but may be two email reminders would be in order…

Anyone know a good place that would provide presentation room in exchange for a few extra beer sales… I will subscribe for at least a couple…

Mason—25th September, 2008 at 1:51pm | Permalink

Thanks for the great feedback guys.

We hear you loud and clear on the email reminders, although we have been trialling the facebook reminder route - clearly that aint working though

Bi-monthly is sounding like the consensus also - so we’ll look at that too.

We could set up a quick poll to see what y’all are keen on I suppose…

Will definitely post a follow-up next week regardless.

Thanks again!

Wayde Christie—25th September, 2008 at 4:01pm | Permalink

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