South It's alive! Or at least it's not dead (yet)!

Hopefully we can keep the South going for a long while yet, but we need to have some meetings! I think London has been swallowed by the rest of the South, so we should be able to get a few members together at the same time, right?

We also need to try and get new members. And ideas and suggestions on that front?

Any ideas and suggestions at all? I might be CR but I'd like some feedback from everyone.

 

Richie posted some events on FB last night that could fall under the Southern banner. I think anyway. I wasn't paying proper attention....

#EDIT: No, London is still a chapter for now. Just waiting for young Richie to post something here, relevant to London with his shiny new prefix!

 

Pub meets always used to be popular........for those that drink anyway!

 

Pub meets are awesome. Cinema meets suck. I'll travel to meet people and chat, but not to sit in a dark room for 3 hours

 

I'm with you on that. The last meet I went on was perfect. Bond Meet back in......whenever it was. Went to the Bond exhibition, then on to see Die Another Day, then the pub.

Oh, and of course I got to meet Darth_Arsenal....

 

Cinema meets are great for cities and chapters with lots of people within a small radius, but that's a luxury we don't have. Meets are few and far between, so I prefer to make them special. Had a great time at the last one where I met up with Everton, Spike2002, Mar17swgirl, SithLordDarthRichie, and later with Jello. Met up at the infamous Arsenal sign (on an Arsenal match day!) to LOL at it, then tube trips to a park to meet up with Richie. Fun adventures trying to find a football, getting beaten by a barefooted girly-girl before being told to stop, then off to a pub to meet Jello. A great day

 

Collectormania in Milton keynes is still the big annual South-based event, I try to go every year if I can. Events like that are the best way to meet new people who might wish to join.

Recruiting new members is the hardest part, especially if many of the old members are not all going to come back here. We used to do posters that were printed out and taken to places along with having tables at events like Collectormania and LFCC where we talked about what we did.

I hope to represent FFUK at Celebration Europe but I'm not sure they have a FanForce table this time.

 

This is the first time I've been called "girly"...

 

There's loads of ways to do meet ups really, without relying on conventions etc. You just need to think outside the box!

 

The big problem is getting places, not everyone has the time or money and the distances can be quite big.

 

This was an issue we were discussing way back when FF-UK first started to form proper chapters. Chapters by definition are meant to be City/Town based, rather than by North, South etc...

And for a while of course we did have a few proper chapters. Hounslow, Plymouth, London of course. But of course peoples locations on these forums were/are so spread out it wasn't possible to create any others.

Maybe when things pick up next year (and they will) we can start to create chapters by towns and cities. That would be my goal anyway.

 

The South though had a number of members at one time from throughout the whole region, which is why it was created that way. It was reasonably active as well plus some of the members lived pretty close to MK which meant attending Collectormania for meets (back then it was twice a year there) was easier.

The Capital city should always have a chapter given it has the largest population density (it also has a lot of events on that attract people), maybe even the second city (Birmingham in this case) if enough people from there can be found.

 

And the capital will always have a chapter. As long as it holds it's required amount of meet ups per year to warrant it being a chapter