Would you join a gaming/tech group?

geon106 · 2 Jan 2012 at 00:05

So basically I want to start a group for the West midlands for tech minded people to occasionally meet and discuss games and tech etc.

However, is there demand for such a grouo/club?

I know homebrew clubs were popular in the 80s 90s but not sure about nowadays

Glaucus · 2 Jan 2012 at 00:06

Sounds terriable and what does it offer over a forum. Where you don't need to leave the house.

Alex74 · 2 Jan 2012 at 00:07

If it werent with friends i'd probably use some sort of online website where you could create threads of discussion about games and tech, drawing upon the knowledge of hundreds of possible contributors..

whitecrook · 2 Jan 2012 at 00:07

Well, there's this thing called the internet. And what it is is a widely available, service that anyone can connect to for very little money and this allows them to discuss and share ideas and information from the comfort of whereever they may be in the world. Groups of people post about these things in newsgroups, or web forums. It's very good. Also, goods and services can even be ordered over this wonder-service.

geon106 · 2 Jan 2012 at 00:12

The Internet isn't very personal though and we was thinking of doing some pan party's which are better in the same room. It'd have a website and forum as well of course. Just not sure if tech minded people like that kind of socialising in a web orientated world

Addicted · 2 Jan 2012 at 00:13

I could understand if it was a group for Sewing or something, but going to meet in person about technology that could be done in your own bedroom just screams facepalm to me to be honest.

Alex74 · 2 Jan 2012 at 00:14

geon106 said:
The Internet isn't very personal though and we was thinking of doing some pan party's which are better in the same room. It'd have a website and forum as well of course. Just not sure if tech minded people like that kind of socialising in a web orientated world

Sure, but it's nicer to be with people you know. If it's a group of you that want to meet then go for it, but go for something more than just having a chat. Make it a LAN party with a few consoles & pcs or something if you're going for a gaming theme

Otherwise there's 0 benefit over chatting over a forum.

madtoady · 2 Jan 2012 at 00:14

I sense a lot of sarcasm in this thread.

On a more serious note tho, what would you want to do in these 'meetings'? Drink tea and biscuits and chat? Or would you give talks or have others give talks? Maybe have some kind of LAN?

geon106 · 2 Jan 2012 at 00:17

madtoady said:
I sense a lot of sarcasm in this thread.

On a more serious note tho, what would you want to do in these 'meetings'? Drink tea and biscuits and chat? Or would you give talks or have others give talks? Maybe have some kind of LAN?

More a discussion about games and technology present past and future. Plus talk about hardware and games. Would potentially involve pan party's too ideally

shauncr91 · 2 Jan 2012 at 00:20

Good idea but can't really see the point. Organise some LAN party's and people end up talking about tech anyway, if I want to talk about the latest line of CPU's I'll just go on a forum.

SideWinder · 2 Jan 2012 at 00:20

I'd rather discuss games whenever i want to by posting on a forum and then meeting mates to chat about games AND life whilst getting drunk.

Alex74 · 2 Jan 2012 at 00:22

shauncr91 said:
Good idea but can't really see the point...

So..bad idea?

GreatAuk · 2 Jan 2012 at 01:19

It might well be nice to speak to people in person rather than over the internet, and you might make better friends with them, but I can't really see people being bothered to actually travel somewhere when they can do essentially the same thing online... It might well be a really fun thing to do, but I just don't think anyone would come along.

Dandaman · 2 Jan 2012 at 01:23

I like the idea but tbh not a lot of people would be interested imo, this is why we have these sort of forums

I use this forum cos no one I talk to is into computers, but if a group existed here I'd probably go just for the sake of having real life conversations with fellow nerds

[FnG]magnolia · 2 Jan 2012 at 04:03

You'll never get them to leave their mom's basement but good luck anyway.

Malevolence · 2 Jan 2012 at 07:20

geon106 said:
So basically I want to start a group for the West midlands for tech minded people to occasionally meet and discuss games and tech etc.

What, like sit around in pubs and have drunken arguments about PC equipment and games? Hell, me and my mates have being doing that for years now.

memyselfandi · 2 Jan 2012 at 07:35

Sounds like a old-school computer club sort of thing ... I used to be in one ~10 years ago before I moved to Nottingham. They can be quite good allowing you to discuss things in real time in a group (think more IRC than forum

)

The one I went to had demonstrations on how to do things, both software and hardware, lectures on various topics and allowed members to bring in their machines if they needed them to be repaired or upgraded and they weren't confident in doing it themselves.

How well it works does depend on what people you have ... We had a mixture from absolute beginners (who maybe weren't confident enough to use things like forums) through to senior technical staff at large IT companies (who liked having the social interaction with their peers as well as helping the newbies). A lot of the beginners were actually older people rather than young gamers.

From what I remember it rather imploded a few years after I left due to differences between the two people who ran the group, (one who was technical and good and the other who thought he was technical but was really quite poor and liked to try and rip off the beginners (it was interesting that whatever was needed to fix their "problem" happened to be something he was selling at an inflated price)).

Kamwah · 2 Jan 2012 at 07:40

They used to be really popular before the internet became common in our everyday lives, I was once looking for a group of people to learn Japanese with in real life like what you're suggesting as I have a friend whose about twice my age and used one back in the 80s to help him on his way.

Needles to say it's all about the internet and I still haven't made any reasonable improvements to my japanese over basic stuff.

I get around · 2 Jan 2012 at 08:24

I was in a homebrew club for a while, we just met up and got drunk every so often.

.Kencs · 2 Jan 2012 at 08:27

whitecrook said:
Well, there's this thing called the internet. And what it is is a widely available, service that anyone can connect to for very little money and this allows them to discuss and share ideas and information from the comfort of whereever they may be in the world. Groups of people post about these things in newsgroups, or web forums. It's very good. Also, goods and services can even be ordered over this wonder-service.

+1

Can't argue with that

I'd rather stay in and discuss things from the comfort of my own home to be honest. A lot easier