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Helford Creek Cyder

AndyRob

Helford Creek Cyder

basket press When we say real cider we are talking about cider that is made from freshly pressed apples, undiluted or fortified. The apples may be grown as cider fruit or can be culinary apples or a mixture...

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Heron Valley Cider

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Apple Cider Vinegar with Mother

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ukcider.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Chimes_of_Pimlico_-_restaura...

Mark George sent a message to the members of Gwynt Y Ddraig Welsh Cider.

Subject: Open Day 25th/ 26th April

It's that time again....

On the weekend of 25th / 26th April Gwynt Y Ddraig will be holding an open day at Llest Farm Llantwit Fardre.

The event will include the usual Cider Making demo's, fully stocked cider bar, plus freshly cooked food, a welsh produce market, rural craft demo's, liquers for sale plus LIVE MUSIC from the Welsh Pipers plus a local band.

Yes....you read right....LIVE MUSIC!

It's going to be a blinder, a bit of sun would be nice but if not I've always found Kingston Black a worthy substitute!

Hope to see you all there - if you need anymore info please feel free to drop me a message

All the best

Mark

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This month sees Facebook rolling out major changes on their social networking structure, appearing to embrace the concept of social objects and placing them on a par with the people in the network, which is where they should be. The changes are modest in terms of technical functionality but potentially could be very big in effect, depending on how people come to use them.   Facebook Pages are Social Objects cider page on facebook as a social object Facebook’s “pages” with “fans” have been around for a year or so, but were implemented as poor relations to personal profiles, not having the ability to push updates out into the newstream. Anybody can create a page for any purpose, so pages can become anchors for topic based conversations, a bit like friendfeed rooms or Flickr groups. On the micro social objects scale, pictures, videos, discussions and status updates added to the Facebook pages will be broadcast out into fans news streams, with the potential for remarkable topics at the pages level to gain traction a lot more quickly than before.    Social Objects theory and Facebook Social Objects theory says that successful social networking sites work best when they enable easy relationships between people and social objects, not just between people and other people. Facebook pages have unique permanent URLs which are expose to search engines, so they are very different from the original college student private profile pages Facebook was founded upon. It’s likely though that much of Facebook’s huge existing userbase is going to be a little confused by this big departure from the longstanding culture of limited exposure to vetted human nodes in the network (friends).  By the way, I’m using the term Social Objects here in it’s strictly European scientific sense, unlike the diluted idealist form that has muddied the theoretical waters somewhat in the past year or so.

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Cheese and Cider Barn at Cheddar

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I’ve just read a message on the ukcider community email list which warrants a response on the meta level about how online communities can be a fantastic resource for research and tapping into a multitude of volunteer information and advice, but only when approached in the right way. Journalists are usually the worst culprits, depending on the domain, and PHD candidates can be a bit single minded too, but anybody could fall into a similar trap and end up disappointed so I’ll try to provide an explanation of how to communicate with online communities and how not to do it. First the quote: I joined this newsgroup because i have an interest in making cider … and I have found the advice gained very useful. ..the other reason for joining is that I have just completed a book about cider (I am a photographer) When I first joined, two years ago, I posted on here, explaining that I was doing a book and wondered if anyone could help (with suggestions for good people to visit and shoot)…. I was looking for interesting producers, pubs, orchards etc all over the country. I didn’t receive a single reply from anyone on this group to that message and had to do all my own research. The key is to think of an online community as an ongoing conversation. It isn’t just a noticeboard where you can put up a post card for passers by. So you need to ease yourself in gradually, rather than with a fanfare and grand announcement. After a brief introductory post, you may receive a welcome or two, or you may be completely ignored. That’s a random and normal response so there’s no point in getting offended. A group of people is incapable collectively of being “rude” by not responding to any particular individual, and people naturally are more inclined to reply to others that they have already got to know to some extent. So don’t get downhearted in the first few days (or weeks depending on the pace) after joining a new community. Keep on joining in occasional conversations whenever you have something useful to say and after a period people will begin to notice you. Then when they do start to reply it will be as if to somebody they have already been talking to, because they have. Unfortunately though, some people just never seem to get this, and they continue to try and turn every group conversation into a 1-to-1, often appending the suggestion to reply off-list as well, which can be interpreted as somewhat selfish. Should you expect an online community to go away and do all your research for you just because you have deigned to post a request? Most people would not have such expectations but from time to time, such is the good nature of people in general, it will actually happen, and stories about how easily online communities can be mined, picked, deployed and harvested add fuel to the reputation. As the ‘owner’ of a lively googlegroup I even get people trying to save themselves the bother of even joining, hoping I will ask their research questions for them and then pass on all the answers. If they come from a print media or broadcasting background they often demand a telephone interview, thinking that simply dropping their phone number into an email is enough to drive information and resources in their direction.

Posted by Andy Roberts How Not To Use Online Communities

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