LONDON, UK: potential website for AS meetups

Post Reply New Topic

I'm thinking of creating a website for the people with AS to meet up with. I'd like to make this site exclusive to the Greater London area to keep things simple.

The main point of the site would be for people to meet and participate in a common interest. It would also be in the interest of further networking (this is extremely important when working freelance like myself). I'd like to extend the audience to people who are uncertain about have AS or not but also NTs who have an understanding of AS.

The main reason I wanted to initiate such a project is born out of a frustration of being cut off from society because of the way my AS affects me. It became quite obvious to me after years of sifting through Google search pages that opportunities for aspies to meet up are pretty few-and-far-between (especially in England, although better than other countries).

The NAS does provide a number of facilities with which to reintegrate aspies into society whether these be employment, social skills building or meetup groups: The problem is that these are aimed towards people all over spectrum with very different needs.

If anyone has any ideas of what I should design this website or what I should include, I'd really appreciate people's input!

Last edited by harry_j_83 on 25 Apr 2011, 2:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

I had this exact same idea! I think it's a good idea but it's getting people out who are shy and haven't been out for a long time which is gonna be the problem. I live in Birmingham and was looking to set up a website for the Birmingham area, but i'd probably want to have atleast 1 other person on board with me first

Is there anyone from Birmingham who would be interested in starting something like this? Regular meet ups and just a general place for people to meet other people and expand social lives

And by the way harry i just sent you a private message mate, Ben

I'm sure people will want to get on board! undoubtedly, a lot of people are going to want to be involved in social opportunities. the problem is finding a way of accessing these people: I think that main thing to consider is what words/phrases people are likely to enter in a google search in an attempt to find such a website.

I'm going to keep this particular to London area: broader would seem somewhat unfeasable and narrower will just be exclusive. but i do hope that people will initiate similar schemes in other towns/ other countries.

what is your experience of the autism services provided in Birmingham, may i ask?

Fair enough and it is something you need to just write everything down i think. I'm most certainly gonna make a website and my experiences of services are basically that their are none, it's pretty dismal in the way of meetup groups and it's a shame

I think that's a great idea! May be difficult to organise; on another site (that I rarely frequent!) they'd mentioned meeting up.....but there's no follow-through.

GoldenBen & harry_j_83: I understand there's a place in London that's a very popular meeting place for Aspergians: The Blue Anchor (game night on Wednesdays). Might youy firstly try there?

Best of luck and surely in London there would be plenty of interested people.

to pet lab:

can you tell me what the address is for that location? i'll check it out. is it every wednesday

^ Below is a link for the Blue Anchor (London). I've heard, vicariously, of the Blue Anchor being an Aspie meet-up but, as I've never been there, I cannot know.

Then, by happenstance, on the forum Aspies for Freedom (which I rarely, if ever visit) a member wrote this (I apologise as I do not mean to cross-quote him via another forum) but OK in this instance......(direct quote below, copied & pasted):

"There is a meet up for people with Aspergers Syndrome (over 18 only) in Hammersmith on the first Tuesday of every month at the Blue Anchor pub, starting around 7pm."

You could check on Aspies for Freedom (AFF) for details. Hope it works out Evidently not too many opportunities in Glasgow.


http://www.blueanchorlondon.co.uk/

i dont think anyone still goes to the blue anchor. it was originally chosen by chris as a west-london meet-up point. its a nice quiet spot by the river, but a lot of the east london people found it too far to travel frequently.

randomly someone arranges a saturday afternoon meet in the city, but thats not happenned for ages...

the infrequency of the events and lack of meeting points is the whole reason i came up with the idea. i think there needs to be something that will attract people to the site, make them want to attend a particulat meetup and make them believe that these meetings will be truly productive.

i think its important that potential meetings are informal and that people can turn up when they want. I also think there that the site should clearly display the people attending a particular event so that each person has an idea of who they will be participating with (to make the whole thing sound more real...)
probably rambling a bit now... bit tired, should go to bed

the quick & easy option would be just to start a new group on meetup.com - it ticks all those boxes with the user profiles, comments and attendee lists. plus it advertises itself; some people will find it on their own (via search) rather than the need to attract them via forums etc.

If you especially wanted to create a site from scratch, you could always link it to meetup.com as a sort of satellite have the best of both worlds.

(to psych)

i was wondering why people hadn't already done so on meetup.com. there's a lot of debate (amongsth the aspergian meetup members) about whether or not there should be an AS group but no one has made one yet.

is it quite easy do you think to just create a group? (i realise that there is a fee incurred for a member setting up a group, £12 a month I think)

I saw that you are from to london as well; have you been to any of the meetup events by any chance?

Some fella did create a london meetup group on there but he never followed through. I don't think anything ever happened with that.

There are groups around Baker Street and the borough of Harrow. But they tend to be more a tight knit community of aspies who've known each other for years and were all roughly diagnosed around the same time. The Baker Street group is actually one ran by the NAS

Now that the weather is improving it probably won't be that hard to try and get people out I imagine.

If you would like help in this purusit at all do get in touch

Just realise there might be a load of complainers coming to your meetup group. After all, people with AS do tend to say what they think.

I'm up for making new friends, as long as it's central. The BIG problem of organising a group say, in the far West of London means people like me travelling from East London, find it WAY too far to go there and back home in one evening. That's why I hardly attended the Hammersmith meetup. I honestly think creating a group near the edge of London could really limit the amount of people who could (and would) go. So make it central, is my advice.

why would there necessarily be complainers. I don't really tend to say what I think: on one hand i don't have the confidence to say what i think but i also know when it isn't appropriate to say certain things.

i definitely intend to make this thing central!

As Laz says, there was one but it didnt go anywhere, although i think there were certainly enough people signed up. I should have joined it myself, im not a much of a 'social network' type so perhaps i found the need to anser questions and create a profile offputting. im also not diagnosed and that wasnt specifically mentioned as being OK - these are stupid reasons though, i basically never get around to doing anything on time.

I didnt realise meetup.com was a paysite, im sure you could get a good turnout just from this site alone with a month or sos notice. Ive probably been to most of the weekend london WP meetups, from the first one on pg1 the 'meet up thread' Some people arrive having just drfited onto this site and might only come to 1 meeting, i suppose they have busier lives are more integrated into 'NT' society and just come to satisfy a curiosity, which is great its nice to be of service lol. Others, regular posters especially have a slightly greater need for an 'aspie' outlet and these people you will know for years. Some of the later meets were cross-posted on 'aspie village' which has slightly more of a hardcore of regular visitors.

The weekend formula has usually been to drift around aimlessly between parks, food outlets which has worked really well imo as the whole point is to talk to each other and imo moving about facilitates that really nicely and can adds a sense of spontanaeity, adventure & being part of a group.

The weekday evening formula was always to meet regularly at a specific relatively quiet pub. When the hammersmith group eventually (i assume) died out it had changed a lot, the guy who had taken over, for instance regarded being amongst the throng gathered around football/telly night as being a desirable thing, which was very different from the group chris had envisioned years before.

I've been to plenty of AS groups, so trust me, there WILL be complainers!! Support groups (or social groups) for people with AS do tend to attract the less able types anyway which makes the amount of complainers (i.e. blunt people) more likely. Just be prepared for a little criticism, is all I'm saying. People have been horrible to me and someone else on here in the past when we organised meetups. Most of the time it's been fine, it's just that after my experience I don't want to organise one again.

For example, some prefer the day to be quite rigidly structured, whereas I'm just there to talk to people.