In getting used to the new forum I couldn’t find any details of our Oxford meetings so here goes:
First Tuesday of the month, 5:30PM, Far From the Madding Crowd, Friar’s Entry, Oxford. It’s the passageway down the side of Debenham’s, from Magdalen Street to Gloucester Green.
That said, I can’t manage this month’s one as I have an unexpected appointment.
Which brings me to a point discussed last month: publicity. It would be useful to attract Welsh speakers and learners from outside the SSiW bubble, and it was suggested that a Facebook group might be appropriate. Sadly I don’t do Facebook, but I’m sure one of our other regulars might have the ability. I was thinking of something a little simpler like a blog to pick up Google ranking - Facebook is a walled garden.
I’m afraid I have rather a lot of stressful stuff going on in my personal life and at work at the moment so I may not be very quick about any of this. I guess I ended up as de facto organiser of the Oxford meets as the originator of the original forum thread, but in the coming months I may not be up to much. Fortunately SSiW lessons while I’m driving are a great de-stresser. I don’t know how many other Oxford regulars have migrated to the new forum - Is the old forum still operational and will people still be looking there? - but if anyone would like to run with this I certainly wouldn’t object.
Hi Jenny - this seems to be the first thread over here specifically for the Oxford crew - we’re going to be doing a bundle of new things to help groups organise/communicate in the next few months, which we hope will make it all a lot easier…
Publicity for local groups is a very interesting conundrum - the best results I’ve heard of so far have been from the humble ‘letter to local paper’, which might be worth considering - but we’ll watch with huge interest to see if you guys work out any replicable approaches with blogs…
The old forum is technically operation - people can post there - but I think we’ll be closing it to new posts in the fairly near future, because it seems that pretty much everyone has migrated.
Sorry to hear you can’t make it tonight - I hope things sort themselves out for you soon.
About publicity, I don’t do Facebook either but perhaps we can come up with some more ideas at the pub tonight - taking on board Aran’s ‘letter to local paper’ suggestion, maybe Daily Info could be worth a try.
My idea with a blog - Wordpress.com or Blogger.com for example - was simply to create a site in the easiest way possible designed to contain all the “Welsh learner Oxford” style keywords and thus score on Google searches for those rather niche terms. Being a search engine specialist by trade and ex-Google (though not exactly Larry & Sergey level) it’s what I do for a living here in dictionary country. Haven’t had time to do anything yet though. Thinking about it you’ll probably cover those bases if you make something on the SSiW site.
We’ve never done anything search related, since we ranked pretty high for ‘learn Welsh’ from a very early stage, and it never seemed worth targeting more niche phrases inside what was already a pretty tight niche - but it would be lovely to sit down with an ex-Googler one of these days and chat about what we ought to be doing more of…
Jenny, I’m in Oxford and would love to meet up for a sgwrs! I’m unavailable for a fortnight due to a conference but let’s arrange something for when I return. PM me and we’ll sort it out. I’m also friends with another Oxfordian who’s learning with me so you’ll make two new friends!
Another Oxfordian here (well, Abingdonian to be precise…):
I have a FB account, but do not consider myself to be an active FB user, and wouldn’t really want to go down that route. Happy with any other reasonable alternative, e.g. a blog that one could comment on (without having to jump through too many hoops - some blogs are better than others in that respect).
Certainly would not want to restrict the Oxford Meetup to the SSiW “bubble” - on the other hand, it would be good to try to make sure every SSiW member who could reasonably get to Oxford becomes aware of the Meetups, supposing they should wish to attend.
I’m actually quite keen to make it more often than once a month actually. Not really quite enough. Not that everyone would need to feel they had to attend each meeting, but there would be more meetings in a year, and maybe more people would have the chance of attending. On a monthly basis, if you can’t get to one meeting for any reason, then that’s no meetup for 2 months - quite a big gap.
Something to think about anyway. I have actually privately invited a non-SSiW person to the Oxford meetup. So far he has not “bitten”, but I still have hopes. He’s quite an interesting character, and I suspect we could all learn from him.
Reminds me that I have used Oxfordshire Gumtree to advertise events for another group. This is free if it comes under “community” which I think this fairly does. Links cost extra, but you can put up an image for free, so e.g. the SSiW poster, or a draig goch or whatever.
Might be a bit late for this time, but
seeing that my Gumtree account is still active, I’ve stuck something similar up there now. Haven’t bothered with an image for now.
I think that one will expire.
I think there is a way of making it more like an event, which will only expire after the event date passes. Will look into that for next month.
Giving this a bump as August the 5th is getting close, has anyone had any response to paper/electronic adverts, it would be good to see the numbers increase but being summer holiday season that may take a while.
Cheers J.P.
Helo RamblingJohn - There was an enquiry from Rachel (don’t know her last name) in response to the DailyInfo ad (“Coming Soon: event ads and announcements”). I emailed her some more details but haven’t heard back as yet. I won’t be able to make it myself on Aug 5th unfortunately but now there are seven of us, and hopefully with CarolynH and maybe Rachel coming along plus anyone who’s eye might have been caught by Mike’s Gumtree ad, there should be enough of us at Far From The Madding Crowd on the 5th
Hwyl
John
I have asked the Sec of the Oxfordshire Welsh Society if he’d circulate this amongst members. I’m hoping to make it on 5th August. Who else plans to be there? David
