Hi Everyone,
Welcome to the November community update. Sorry for the long post, but a lot to get through this month.
📰 Due to the migration to the new Meet-up group the community is now at around 1,750 members. Why is this important? Well, due to the limitations of WhatsApp we can only have 2000 members in the community, which means we have to take steps to “prune” groups that get large with inactive members. The only way we can do this is create a new group, then remove the other one (and all its members) from the community. Don’t worry, providing you are members of other groups when this happens, you will still remain part of the community. We always aim to give plenty of feedback when we do this so there should be no surprises.
🚨 I wanted to take a moment to remind everyone that if you receive an unsolicited message from anyone in the community, to let an admin know so we can take action. We take the safety of our community very seriously, and we have a zero tolerance policy toward this.
🎥 I am hoping to launch a “Cinema Club” in the next week or so, where the format will be simple, we watch a film together each week and have a drink before/afterwards to discuss it. All of the details will be shared in “Screen Time” (and probably Meet-up as well, but TBC) so feel free to join the group if you are interested.
🚫 We have seen an increase of attempted scammers in the group, mostly around the Classifieds group, selling tickets and other high demand things. I wanted to remind you to be vigilant, if you do not recognise a member, or a deal seems too good to be true – please flag to an admin. We will always try and step in and mediate, and take action where required.
🎊 In other news, this Sunday (23rd November) the group will turn 5 years old 🎉 – so to celebrate this we have our 5th birthday bash at Alice Secret Garden, we have very limited spaces (~80) and it is fully booked at the time of writing, but we are hoping release more spots shortly – so please be sure to register. If you have not registered, then you might struggle to get in to our area. It really does help the community when you register for events on Meet-up, but there are always regulars that skip this (you know who you are…) – so please do take a moment to register. If you are a regular, and there is not space, please drop an admin a message so we can get you added, as the priority are group members and contributors.
🗂️ We are always looking for organisers and people who want to help run events for our community, so if this is something you might be interested in doing, please let an admin know. We always welcome anyone that wants to arrange fun things for the community and have an “organisers” group, which is reserved especially for such folk. We are also always on the look out for venues, so if you know of a venue for one of our meet-ups (from 20-150 people), please let us know.
🤑I have been working on a project to get all of the best deals from Amazon, and syndicate these to WhatsApp – its not perfect, but it is now publishing a load of deals/mis-prices and other offers from Amazon.es on a regular basis. If you do buy from Amazon, please do consider supporting the community by using the links here as we are part of the Amazon affiliate programme and I will use any sales through the group to recoup some of the costs we incur via the various subscriptions (hosting/Meetup/etc) we pay for. I will create a community group for this soon and also share the deals there. Click here to join the broadcast group.
🎗️A reminder we also have Barna.News which is another project I am working on to bring more local news to English speakers – I share this news in our News Flash group. We also share via a WhatsApp Broadcast channel, and via our official X group, and sometimes I even post on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube – and our sub Reddit (which is not run by over zealous nazi type mods – I’m not bitter AT ALL 😂). Click on a link and give us a follow, it really does help.
🥾 We also launched a Hiking & Nature group, where the wonderful Gio is organising regular hikes, if you need to escape the city and get some fresh air and peace, join the group and get hiking. Daria is also organising the excellent weekly volleyball in Meet-ups – usually on a Saturday or Sunday and everyone is welcome. Nijo is organising regular book club meetings (in the book club group) – the next one is the 6th December for those who are interested. We also have a parallel community for events such as Primavera sound, which is a wonderful group if you love music and are attending the festival.
I have loads more to share, but for those of you that have made it this far, thanks for reading my ramblings and being part of this amazing community ❤️.
