Looking to have all the dates sorted for the whole year rather than keep announcing them now and again, these are provisional at the moment in case we have clashed with school hgolidays or other events, if anyone does see a date clash then please let us know.

Jan 19th, Wed Banstead
March 9th, Wed Darlington
April 13th, Wed Bishops Stortford
May 9th, Mon Bristol
June 7th, Wed Manchester
Oct 5th, Wed Leeds
Nov 30th, Wed Bishops Stortford

We will also be having the David Grist Memorial lecture in Birmingham on Wed 20th July

The care & share days are all sponsored by Pioneer Europe and Lyn and I sponsor the memorial lecture

All days are dependent on getting a minimum of 15 people attending for the day to go ahead, venue ideas or suggestions for other areas are always considered so please let us have your thoughts on making the days even more fun and interactive. We are also happy to travel to face painting conventions and jams so if anyone attends these and would like us to come along then please let us have the details and we will see if we can fit the date into our diary.

We have decided to go ahead with the "WWW" button so that this will click thru straight to everyones website from the bottom of every post and we will also have a "photo/album/portfolio/gallery" button at the bottom of everyones posts as well. Not sure what out of the four it should be called but possibly portfolio?

The last thing that I'm not too sure about is just having the balloon chit chat part of the forum open to non members and then they have to join up to view everything else, I have been told this may effect our google rankings etc but the idea behind this is to get more members joining the site and being active on the forum. Perhaps we could try this for a trial period and see what the results are?

All thoughts and suggestions are appreciated.

This site has some amazing sculptures, http://www.cuteballoon.net/blackcat-0.html

It was nice meeting you even though just for a short time, perhaps you will get the bug along with your son for this great art of ours?

Quote from: "YvonneH"Snurb there already is.  You can't select individual posts (but then you could just click in and out of them) but if you go to the main forum page there is a button to mark all forums as read and that will remove all the red flags.

I'm glad you replied to that Yvonne as I was not sure what surb meant.

I got the phone last week and have spent today trying to download all the programmes so that I can syn it up and get it working.
Have downloaded;
direct x 9.0c
net framework 3.5
windows media 11
and have been told to also download mobile device centre 6.1 which for some reason will not download so looks like I'll be calling the help centre again tomorrow.
Looks like the days are gone when you put in the sim card and away you go.

Welcome to our little forum, hope you enjoy and please spread the word as the more members the merrier.

If anyone is coming to the last care & share day for 2010 here is the plan of action;

The day runs from 10 till 6 with activities planned for all day,
10.30 till 11.15, Basic class
11.45 till 1.15, Christmas balloons
2.00 till 3.00, Line work, balloons for the real world
3.45 till 4.45, From little to large, golden nuggets

We will be running a competition throughout the day and the prize is the balloon hat book by Addi Somekh which is probably one of the best twisted hat books available with stunning photography and pictures from his trip around the world.

We will try to make the day into a party atmosphere so please stay as long as you can and all nibbles and cream cakes are always appreciated, we will be going out after for a meal, everyone is most welcome. We are down to having only nine spaces left so the day may well sell out?

We are always looking to improve the forum and the ideas we are thinking about at the moment are to have a website button under everyones post like the profile, quote and PM buttons so that people can click straight thru to your website. Also looking to have a portfolio button added as well so that everyone can add pictures to the site.

Membership is growing and we are always looking for ways to get people more actively involved with the forum so another idea is to have just the balloon chit chat section open to non members and then you have to join the site to view everything else, thoughts are that once you join up you may as well then add comments and start posting. Membership would still be free, I'm not thinking of making this a paying site.

All thoughts, suggestions and ideas are welcomed and appreciated, another idea we are thinking about is starting up a balloon club similar to the United Twisters in Holland which would help in getting money up front to help booking international lecturers for the group instead of myself taking a chance and hoping we get enough people booking to cover my expenses.

THE BALLOON ARTISTES GUILD, to attend all 10 days and receive 3 DVD's from the star lecture days that are recorded with over 4 hours of educational material from
some of the top names in the balloon community. The cost is just £120 with bank transfer or cheque. The fee is £125 if you wish to pay with credit card or PayPal.

The thread is in the events section on the front forum page or you can hit the search button and put in millennium jam or any other topic you are looking for, glad you enjoyed the pictures.

Leo has just emailed me the full list of winners from The Millennium Jam,

One balloon competition
3° Zsolt Dömötör
2° Antonio Bécares
1° David Brenion

Multi Balloon Competition
3° Dmitry Tishchenko
2° Andrew McDonald
1° Twistina

Master Balloon Designers of TMJ 2010 :
Rie Hosokai & Sofie Vandewyer

Life Time Achievement Award (& 6th member of the MJ Twister Hall of Fame) : Patrick Brown

Of course there are also the DEWEYS for :
Colin Myles, Lifetime achievement award
Thelma Levett, Twister of the year
Pieter Van Engen, Rising star

Koen & Jochem, Most entertaining act at TMJ, The cocktail bar

Ralph explains more if you click thru to his website or you can email him for more details.

Ralph sent out an email via balloonHQ looking for nominations for his balloon excellence awards;

Hello Twisters,
I'm about to start making decisions about my annual Balloon Excellence Awards. If anyone would like to suggest a twister for consideration for the awards, please let me know by the end of November.  Please explain why the candidate should be considered.  There are several award categories which are explained on my web page.
http://home.flash.net/~balloonz/Award.htm

The last one, the dragon from DVD1

John's owl and superman from the request section;