At about 9.30am on Friday 18th September  there were some mildly nervous Rays (Smith and Betty) and Pauls (Squires and Henderson) getting ready for the first CWSMC. But we needn’t have been worried as we saw the ‘on our way’ tweets coming in and by 10am there was already a great hum of chatter going on as everyone made their assault on the pastry mountain.

The turn out for the first cafe was everything and more than we had hoped for.  About people 25 came, chatted, made contacts and found out more about what is going on around social media in Warwickshire. A really good mix of people from local government, universities, arts organisations, private companies and freelancers came and we are so happy that everyone gave it a punt for the first one.

We kept formalities to a minium (and didn’t want to interrupt the chat and networking) but the few official words we did say were captured below (and broadcast live on Qik by Dom Breadmore)

Some of the other comments that were tweeted

@amy_clarkeuk:

Back in office after the first ever coventry / warwickshire social media cafe – and what a very good cafe it was too! #cwsmc

@matthawthorne:

Good to meet @getgood, @kazThomas at #cwsmc today. Will be going again for sure. Thanks @paulhenderson.

and @katehughes:

I very much enjoyed @cwsmc this morning. Met some lovely folk and got poked in the eye by @paulsq. That’s all I look for in an event really.

Big thanks go to Ray Smith and Warwick District Council for the use of the Court Street Creative Arches (and we’ll be back for the next CWSMC in October), Ray Betty and Konnex Networks for WiMax-ing us up, ScreenWM for sponsoring the coffees and (endless) pastries supplied by The Olive Garden, and Sarah Allen for putting is in touch with Ray and making it all possible.

Thanks to everyone who came especially Philip John all the way from Lichfield (enabling us to compare notes with his social media cafe) and Nicky Getgood from Birmingham with her Talk About Local hat on.

What next?

Well can’t promise to poke your eye out, but we are definitely making this a regular event. So if you came and enjoyed it,  tell your colleagues and friends (especially if they’re not on Twitter) that the 3rd Friday of every month is going to be the date in the diary for the CWSMC.  We’ll be back at the Creative Arches again for the next one on October 16th 10am-12pm.

Sign up on the wiki or just turn up on the day- look forward to seeing you and thanks again for making it such a great event.

• More pictures on Flickr (tag your pictures cwsmc if you took any on the day )
• Tweets tagged #cwsmc