We’ve had a really good response to our request for votes for our new venue for the Isle of Man Social Media Club’s Third Thursday venue. Thank you to everyone who participated.

The shortlisted venues were (in no particular order):

• Coffee Exchange
• Bar George
• Jabberwocky
• Carnival Lounge

We also asked for any other ideas, and we received a few great establishments as alternative options. Although we got enough votes in for the main poll, we’ll certainly bear these in mind for future.

It was a close a one, with votes being taken to the “second round” due to a tie between Bar George and Jabberwocky. Oh the tension.

So we’ll start making arrangements for Jabberwocky to book us a table for the next Third Thursday, on 19th December. We’ll be upstairs, where it might be a bit quieter and we have more room.

Jabberwocky do great food and is a favourite of some of our regulars, particularly for language evenings. With lots of room upstairs with comfy chairs we should be able to grow to larger groups as we need.

The full results can be viewed in on the Excel Live spreadsheet.

We hope to see you for the final Third Thursday of 2013.

As our regulars will know, we’ve had to change from our usual venue, Paparazzi, due to it closing. The restaurant was particularly good for our meet-ups. There was always enough space and the staff were always welcoming and most helpful in accommodating our widely changing head counts!

This has given us the opportunity to consider where we will hold our future meet-ups. We’ve been holding them at Coffee Exchange on Athol Street for the last two months, who have been most accommodating for us.

Having thrown a few venues around (not literally) at our last meeting, we came up with a short-list of possibilities:

Coffee Exchange

Remain at Coffee Exchange. It’s light and airy, central and the staff are friendly.

Bar George

Good food, friendly staff with lots of room which we can book ahead of time. Bar George is on Hill Street (behind Athol Street) and is pretty central.

Jabberwocky

Jabberwocky are on Duke Street so are fairly central and have a room upstairs which we might be able to use.

Carnival Lounge

A new place which might be worth trying. It’s on Strand Street, further down towards The Strand Centre.

We’re looking for somewhere with lots of space so we can add more chairs, fairly easy parking and a central location so we can all make it safely!

We’ve decided to create a short survey to gauge your reaction. As it’s Christmas, we need to contact the venues fairly soon to make sure they can accommodate us. So please take a minute or two to vote for your preferred venue, or add your own idea:

[ sorry, voting closed ]

We’ll take the result on Thursday 5th December and contact the preferred venue to make sure they can accommodate us. If the venue is unavailable, we may just need to try your second option 😉

As usual, we’ll remind everyone and publish the chosen venue in the week preceding December’s Third Thursday, which will be on 19 December 2013.