How it all started...

Like many people, when I moved to Norwich I needed to increase my social networks  but soon found that people of my age group had few ways of finding others on a similar wavelength on a social / friends basis. Clubbing and hanging around in bars simply did not appeal.

As a result, I started Social Buddies in December 2005 with just one meet, using the meets function of a friends-and-dating website.  The programme soon grew to 8 meets and then the usual 15 or so a month, by which point our hosting software had become too cumbersome. For a short while the group was run through email before we found our current home with Yahoo Groups.

Yahoo has its strengths and limitations, and the intention is to move Social Buddies to a better software platform, to give us more flexibility in how we run the group. But, having looked at a fair few possibles in the last 18 months, amazingly we haven't yet found anything which will be better than Yahoo whilst still being user friendly and affordable. The search continues, but in the meantime we are using this site as the 'public' part of the site, and Yahoo groups as the 'members only' part of the site.

What makes Social Buddies different?

Social Buddies is probably unique in actively seeking to create a sense of consistency and safety around meets - you know that:

• details of events have been personally researched
• each month will hold a very broad balance of good quality events from mainstream stuff to art and the arts
• normally at least 15 events a month, fewer in August and December/January
• you are likely to meet independent-minded professional and creative people like yourself
• there will be someone at each meet who is committed to helping each person feel welcome and included
• all this, plus we take great pride in finding a good number of interesting events that are free or very low-cost

Plus we will be negotiating special Members' Benefits with selected local organisations.