Time for an Irish meet?

[NI_Volvo_Nut]

I'm up for that

[mchudd]

Hi all.
Andy did a great job in orginizing the Ballymena meeting.As i said at the time,i work a shift pattern and usually i am working or other commitments when these meet are on.I have only managed to get to two meetings,Glenshane and Ballymena.Just an idea but how about a central Ireland weekend thing where everybody could meet up,go for a scenic drive,something to eat and get ****ed that evening.
Cheers Mark.

[NI_Volvo_Nut]

Hey Mark, thats the kind of thing me and Tony were just discussing in PM, so anybody want to suggest a location were such an event could happen, my thoughts would be, a Saturday afternoon meet, tour round with some photo's, dinner and drink that night in a Best Western where we can have a good ol chin wag and discuss how to revive the Ireland scene. Midlands seems the most logical place to me if anyone knows a good hotel, scenic drive and good food.

[brens-s80]

hi all,

seems like a thrice a year meet would be do able and as suggested a stay over /drinks would slot in nicely.

In the past we have used a hotel in Mullingar ( name escapes me ) but i will look out for one thats near a scenic drive and get back to you all.

Can those who are interested post some possible dates so we can get an idea of how to maximize numbers .

tia

brendan

Originally Posted by NI_Volvo_Nut

Hey Mark, thats the kind of thing me and Tony were just discussing in PM, so anybody want to suggest a location were such an event could happen, my thoughts would be, a Saturday afternoon meet, tour round with some photo's, dinner and drink that night in a Best Western where we can have a good ol chin wag and discuss how to revive the Ireland scene. Midlands seems the most logical place to me if anyone knows a good hotel, scenic drive and good food.

[trev93rabbits]

Hi Bren.
Mullingar would suit me fine, i will wait and see what others think.
regards,
Trevor.

[NI_Volvo_Nut]

Sounds good to me too, just throw up dates and I should be able to work round them.

[DarrenK]

Brendan did a good job of summing things up. Nice to see your sticking around, last I read you were selling the GLT?

Anyway, I'm all for a centralized Ireland meet (although not physically / actively, obviously ) and having three meets a year - in fact, I think, due to low numbers and the distances everyone has to travel, why not have the meets each year at the same place? This way, everyone knows what to expect and if anything, numbers per meet might increase (word spreads), rather than decrease (for the reasons listed above).

Mullingar is more or less central and reasonably well accessible for everyone - I think the very first Irish Volvo Meet Brendan orangised was here - there's a good topic with pictures on the forum from a few years back. The first Irish Meet I attended in the 480 was also here.

A 'weekend' event, or at least, Saturday overnight, would probably be ideal for everyone - make a weekend of it with the family. As suggested, meet in the afternoon, go for a run, have dinner and a few drinks in the evening and maybe even have a little show and shine on Sunday morning before everyone heads home. The hotel the previous meets were held at is the Bloomfield House Hotel ( www.bloomfieldhousehotel.ie ). Maybe they'd offer a discount for Volvo owners staying the night, if contacted. Otherwise, there's a few campsites close by.

Also, last year Brendan likely purchased the domain volvoowners.ie ( www.volvoowners.ie ). I set-up a basic website but never released due to moving. If anybody with a little HTML experience would like to work with it and keep it updated I'm sure that wouldn't be a problem. Getting a batch of window stickers made might help attract new members and would also be a good tool for 'flyering' other Volvos (I can supply a design I had already made). Every little helps...

An idea for meet dates could work out every fourth month (and lapse each year); Jan Feb Mar April May June July Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec... Obviously if you didn't want to wait until Dec the first meet could temporarily be the end of Sep, for example.

[ahal]

I like the hotel idea but I think it might be better kept as an option, in the current economic climate. In my own case I'm single so unless there's mighty good room service I think I'd pass, unless anyone can suggest an 'appropriate' place

I know I said midlands but the Cashel idea was more thinking along the lines of the 'deep south'. Perhaps we need to look more southern this time, having done Northern Ireland / Dublin area pretty much exclusively in the past?

Mullingar sounds good, but I'm just thinking on this particular occassion.

Cheers,

Tony.

[440anator]

hey there

im up for any meets
btw Darren u mentioned about stickers being made right? well i can take care of that as i know a friend who makes graphics/designs for vans cars the lot, an i believe he cud do this for me no prob, altho he slags my volvo he prob secretly loves it :P anyways cud u send me ur designs/ideas? then i could get em printed, that way i wud b helpin out in sum sort of a way lol

[ahal]

Top man! The suspense is killing me ... come on Darren, show us the friggin' thing

RE:

Originally Posted by DarrenK

Also, last year Brendan likely purchased the domain volvoowners.ie ( www.volvoowners.ie ). I set-up a basic website but never released due to moving. If anybody with a little HTML experience would like to work with it and keep it updated I'm sure that wouldn't be a problem.

I don't have pure HTML / XHTML coding skills, but I know my way around ( I'm studying it at the moment ). I do, however, use a pretty neat package for my own sites, this would mean migrating the look / theme / logo of the existing site ( which is just fine ) to the program I have.

This particular program is particularly powerful in the galleries context, and automatically creates metadata and so on for google. I usually view such WYSIWYG programs as s***e, but this is pretty neat ( along the lines of dreamweaver ). So, I'm game for that if needed.

Cheers,

Tony.

PS: I also have a couple of sleeping domains which are handy for testing. That way results could be seen by all along the way.