Hi all, welcome to the August community update.
Summer is intense here, with the consistent 30+ degree days at high levels of humidity and lots of crowds - it's a struggle to stay cool. My AC is working hard and my recent electricity bill confirms it, but I promised myself when I left the grey of the UK I was never going to complain… So when you do get a cooler day (like today, a chill 28 degrees with only 35% humidity), then it's a nice change.
During the slightly quieter month, I've had the chance to build a system to help monitor the groups, and I thought I'd share some of the insights from the community (it's only been running since 2nd August).
Capacity:
- BES Lifestyle: 19 groups, 1,826 members, 91% full against its 2,000-member cap (only 174 seats left)
- BES Social: 8 groups, 1,054 members, 53% full (946 seats left, room to grow)
- Tightest single group: BCN English Speakers, 974 members, 95% of its 1,024 cap, 50 seats left
Activity:
The top 5 groups by messages are:
- BCN English Speakers
- BCN Ravers (36% of members posting)
- BCN Book Club
- BCN Buy/Sell/Rent/Trade
- BCN Sports Talk
Our BCN Ravers group is our newest, and I've been really happy with the community - we've already had several meet-ups, including an excellent one last Friday where we did three events in one night. For those who enjoy electronic music and want to meet like-minded people, I highly recommend it. We're planning the next event, and we'll definitely go somewhere after the next monthly meet-up, which is planned for Friday 25th September at 8pm at the Lemon Tree - you can sign up for that on Meetup, or Luma (its free, designed to help meet people and everyone is welcome).
For those of you who might not be aware of the setup of the community, we have it split in two, due to the limits imposed by Meta: BES Social and BES Lifestyle, each with its own related groups. You can see what groups we have in each in the image below, and you can find a guide on how to enter any of the groups here — feel free to join any of the communities that might interest you. I'm regularly surprised that some people don't know about the other parts, but I guess that's down to us as admins not explaining well.
August's book club choice is Boulder by Eva Baltasar, and the meet-up is on 12 September (venue TBC) - check BCN Book Club to get involved.
I have been working a lot on Barna.News, and I have added a guides section, this contains a lot of the crowd sourced insights we have captured from the groups over the years along with an events calendar, and a guide to all of the fiesta majors, there will be soon a section which shows all of the English language films in the city.
Cheers,
Owen
