Posted by spoc on April 24, 2004, at 17:06:48
In reply to Re: Don't you all kind of wish we could meet?, posted by gardenergirl on April 24, 2004, at 14:14:06
Hi! Maybe this would be better on Admin, but... Anyway, you guys don't know me, but I've thought about this too. Not only in reference to meeting local PB people, but also as far as setting up a casual "support/social group" that would be less "clinical" than I gather some existing ones can be (i.e., meeting in barren donated classrooms). Colorful, anything I wanted the mission statement to be; people with a common "baseline" to their struggles but who also wanted to be able to get off-topic and just cut up and relax sometimes, in various surroundings. But alas, I am far from an organizer.
SO! Have any of you heard about this site, Meetup.com? You can propose any topic to form a group around, and the site does most of the work for you towards setting up monthly get togethers of local chapters of it "worldwide" on the same day. All for free (for a few measly bucks you can get some bells and whistles that wouldn't be necessary to the main purpose). So, how about an International PB Meetup Day (or, just a unique local support group as I was describing). You guys could all do a conference call (video conferencing??) from your local chapter of the PB monthly Meetup!
Take a look at the site. I put a link below to the "suggest a topic" page; then to the main page; then to some recent improvements (excuse the word "beer" in that one title -- guess that just happened to be the group page on which the changes got announced); and lastly, to some examples of existing topic groups.
You may see that participation and communication can be spotty with *some* groups, but that is what they are working on improving. AND, lack of a defined "promoter" and hesitance about the unknown have probably been factors. BUT -- a PB group would be strides down the road already, with so much communication and good feelings already established. It could be anything you make of it:
http://www.meetup.com/suggest/topic
http://beer.meetup.com/letter/
http://www.meetup.com/search/?search=anxiety
http://www.meetup.com/search/?search=depression
http://www.meetup.com/search/?search=ADD
http://fibromyalgia.meetup.com/
poster:spoc
thread:339532
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040419/msgs/339608.html