When is a Group not a Group?

...When it is a society.

Recent issues with the availability of the war memorials and war graves forums on a 24 x 7 basis, plus the realisation that we are not as well known as we thought, have convinced a few of us that we finally have to take the bull by the horns and form a committee to run things. We've always taken a bit of pride in our independence and the fact everything is done by volunteers and on free hosting sites. However we have reached a stage where we need to take a more mature view on how we operate.

For one thing the data we have on the forums need to be stored on a secure database. The only way we can see that happening is by getting some sort of funding, and a large amount of it at that. To get funding we need to be a charity, and to be a charity we need a society with a properly elected and constitutionally bound committee. We also need to raise our profile too. Being a proper society should help with that.

Since we have come to that decision we feel there is no point hanging around so a meeting a.s.a.p. to kick things off would be a good thing.

We have decided to meet at 2pm at the Camperdown Bar in Queen Street Station in Glasgow, on Saturday 3rd September. We felt that was a good central location in Glasgow and should be easy to get to from a lot of places.

We'd like to invite anyone interested along to the meeting, hopefully the first meeting of a new society interested in all aspects of Scottish military history.

If you'd like to come along please let us know by contacting us on the SMRG website feedback page. Let us know your e-mail address and mobile phone number. That way we can make sure that everyone knows if there is a sudden last minute change of plan.

For those not able to attend we would still like you to be involved so please feel free to contact us with thoughts on the future of any society formed; plus any items you'd like discussed so I can add them to an agenda I am preparing for the day.

The meeting place of a bar has been chosen so that once the formalities of the day have been finished with we can have an infomal get together. It's a Wetherspoons pub so they are quite happy to serve tea and coffee during the day too for those driving. I'm hoping the actual meeting will take about 60-90 mins and then we have the rest of the afternoon to chat.