Birmingham Bike Polo Chat & BS Thread

Sunday (evening?)

Matt
Neil
mya
Joe
Kat

unday (evening?)

Matt
Neil
mya
Joe
Kat
Dan after 6pm

Sunday (evening?)

Matt
Neil
mya
Joe
Kat
Dan after 6pm
Harry

can we do this at 7 or later plz. or at my house, one or the other.

Weds 17th December, 7pm, Calthorpe
1 Malletesta

I spoke to the people at Joseph Chamberlain college last night and they are open over Christmas but only in the evenings (after 5.30) on the 28th, 29th or 30th.

I can't do the 29th but I can do either of the others if other people are around and want to test it out? He originally said £15 an hour but I reckon we can get it a bit cheaper as it's a bit mossy and they should be fairly quiet then. Let me know what you think and I will book it.

Me and mya can do any of those dates and think we should go for it. so we know for sure how it plays/what needs doing to make it better.

Let us know which date you book

I'm not sure I'll be here for those dates, but happy to look at before Xmas if it helps.

Maybe we should try in the new year, when people are less busy and there are more of us around?

How about checking this place out on the 7th, or the 14th?

Probably can't on the 7th because I think they wanted more notice than that but we could try on the 14th?

So, as I said on Sunday ‘New Year, New Me’ (it's even better written down!!) so I have started on some of the things we talked about at the meeting. I have e-mailed someone from the Ladywood District about sorting the surface of the court at Highgate. Given how long it took me to get in contact with the right person about Calthorpe I would imagine this might be a long process.

I’ve also e-mailed my friend who works at the BBC about whether she thinks BBC WM or the local website would run a story on us for us to get a bit more publicity/ new members. She’s given me some information about who to contact and some tips on what kind of stories they might be looking for. She said that generally they want something that has a specific event they can link to (so if we were having a tournament) or an interesting angle, but that this is a really quiet time of year so that it might be a good idea to e-mail them in the next week or so. If you think we should do this, or not do this, or have an interesting angle to make them interested in running a story then let me know. If we have the website/ logo sorted soon we could include this, if not we can just put about facebook and the e-mail address.

Kat, can we have a feature based around your new goal tally spreadsheet? then it can become a running story on the midlands today sports section!

Nice one @Go_Kat, great idea @n3il.

I'll share a link for the website later this week, so people can test it out and help make it better. It's missing a bit of content for now (shop items etc) but you'll get an idea how it all works. I imagine we could def make it live by the end of January, maybe end of next week...

Everyone happy with the domain name birminghambikepolo.co.uk?

I'm happy with it. How much is it?

It's something like £12 for 3 years for just the domain (and I could host the site with my hosting).

If you want to pay for BHBPA hosting (in anticipation for the website blowing up in popularity and using up all my bandwidth) it would be £36/year for domain + hosting.

I think just the domain should do for now.

noice.

Sounds great Harry, I think you're right about just having the domain for now, I look forward to seeing it. I think (if no one has any objections) I will e-mail them this week and just say hi, we exist! And then we can take it from there.

Neil unfortunately I have only kept a tally of my own goals (ELEVEN) so it might be a pretty limited spreadsheet!

14th sounds good Kat for new court trial. Me and Mya spotted a court very close to highgate that isn't as good as highgate, but would make a good back up court should we get forced off of highgate by kids or cricketers.

Excited about the website harry I think the password you were after (to help set up the shop) was Highgate1 or highgate1.

Perhaps we could re-approach your friend, Kat once we have set a date/idea for our spring/summer tournament. It might help generate footfall or sponsorship.

I propose once we have the website set up and the new court tested we sit down for another meeting to review both and start planning for our tournament.

regards,
Matt

Top games last night. Disappointed to see Kat's goal scoring average plummet from 11 a session to one though. Too many Skols?

Kat and Joe are under orders to save them for league games.

Way harsh Chris!

In other news, I have heard back from the MPs assistant, apparently the MP was very sorry to hear about the problems with the court at Highgate and is looking into it now.

Vague memories of polo last night...

Just woken up Dan?

Anyone want to sell me a 58 track frame?

Preferably Aluminium. Fin! Where did your Genesis come from?

Here's a link to the site: http://beta.birminghambikepolo.co.uk/

Content-wise, it's pretty much word for word from the tumblr. I combined the 'rules' and 'equipment' pages and called it 'Basics'; 'contact' has changed to 'Join' and could include info about membership [when that stuff is all finalised...].

The shop is new. Would be great to some real products in! Also, Fin/Dan, do you have either the BHBPA paypal login or bank details so we can set up a new account and get the shop all properly configured?

We spoke about having a blog -- are people still into this? I imagine it might only be updated occasionally. We could import all the posts from https://birminghambikepolo.wordpress.com/

Last new thing is the 'Next Polo' date, venue and weather forecast at the top of the page. It's all automatically generated but can be manually overridden (if we know polo is cancelled or times are different).

Design/structure is based a lot on the tumblr, and the hand in the bottom left is a proposed logo [courtesy or M&M!].

Are there any things that are missing or general ideas/suggestions? Would a one liner about BHBPA be good somewhere on the homepage?

More images would be great for the more static pages (Links, Join).