A meetup and a quick review

Well last week or so the Newcastle New Media list kicked into life once again with a flurry of posts (some of a sickening nature regarding future rock star Nathan Hardwick). After a suggestion to have a look at meetwithapproval.com (more on in a moment) we finally got round to organising a proper meetup.

The date has been set as the 12th of January 2006. The location as The Bridge Hotel and the time around 17:45.

So anyone in the area fancy coming along feel free. The plan is nothing formal. Lots of people have lots of ideas from organising a full blown conference to a vaguely regular meetup. My feeling is that anything we can do to help build a sense of community can only be a good think – what to do with the website and education are on the top of my list in reality. The latter both in terms of learning from everyone else and hopefully giving back. I’d like to get some sort of response to the Local Uni’s web coursess as well, something me and Phil discussed a while back.

With regard to meetwithapproval we used it and organised something so there you go. A success. However it had a wide range of little bits that didn’t quite work or things that appeared missing – plus no documentaion I could see. I’m going to note them down here, but before I do I’d like to say it’s not in a vengeful sort of a way. I’d much rather be using web applications like this (in Beta if you must) now rather than the finished, untested things in six months. Ok, here goes:

• A few people using the service could not, try as they might, mark them selves as accepted. Not sure on browser type and version – sorry.
• In setting up the event I wasn’t really sure what was going to happen. The email that was sent to people didn’t really tell the recipients about the service as I didn’t include that in the description. A separate box for email message would be handy here.
• A nicer memorable event url would be good, rather than the long numeric string.
• RSS feeds for comments and acceptances and date suggestions are an absolute must and would make the app far more useful.
• Some badges would be nice. I’m going to… and so are… type things. Good way of promoting the service too.
• When I confirmed the event I was not aware that it would immediately close comments and acceptances from people. I just thought that it would mean the event was definately on. I found this misleading. I think some more explanation and fine grained control would be nice here. If the event was going to move later on then I’d need to set up a brand new event.
• Maybe cancel does what I’m describing but I’m not wanting to press it incase it emails everyone telling them not to bother coming.

As I mentioned I hope the people behind the app dont take this the wrong way. I’ll love to keep using it in the future and with a couple of improvements (especially the RSS and documentation) I can see a nice future. Maybe a nice API as well? Any other comments or suggestions leave a comment.

Anyone coming along on the 12th as well who feels like saying hi, or getting going early leave a comment too.