This post was written by Shane who you may know as TokenBG on our forums and @tokenbg on Twitter.

At roughly 4:30 pm on Saturday, I was sitting with most of the SimSynners in the lobby of the hotel we were staying at. Most of us had already been in the hotel for a while so pleasantries, hello’s & “nice to meet you’s” had been exchanged. Tim (Trekky Geek) had introduced himself to me by asking “So I guess you’re token bg?”. I pretended to be offended. After all, Tim was behaving like there wasn’t another black guy in the place? To be fair to him there wasn’t. How we laughed.

Not long after, Rich walked into the lobby, waved to everyone, and went to the bar to get himself a Guinness. All of a sudden I felt a tangible pang of nerves. I’d already spoken to most people and been made to feel nothing less than extremely welcome. But here was the boss, the Evil Emperor, the man without whom this meet-up, not to mention the past five years of podcasting entertainment would have been possible. He sat down next to Mary (Mekka), which was opposite where I was sitting. I leant forward to say hello and… Well, I guess I froze. For some reason I was unable to do what I’d did repeatedly with everyone else over the past couple of hours – say hi. By this point Mary & Rich were well into conversation themselves, so I could hardly interrupt just to say hello. “Frack frack frack” I thought, the moment’s gone. All I could do now is sip from my beer whilst internally admonishing myself.

At about 1:00 am on Sunday, the bulk of us were in a club in Leeds (The Fab Café). At one point I said to Rich, “If I ever owned a club, it’d be exactly like this one”. Rich nodded in agreement and said, “The DJ hasn’t played a song that I don’t own” (you may have noticed him tweet something similar).

So I guess I’d better tell you how I went from being unable to say hello to Mr Smith to us sharing our mutual appreciation for the Fab Café in the early hours.

By the time Rich & Allison arrived, we soon left for the Vic – that’s the pub you can see in Trekky Geek’s video on the meet-up forum thread. Unsurprisingly for a Saturday night, the pub was pretty busy and seating space was minimal. I’m not sure how but we managed to procure a space that looked like it had been reserved – and not for us. It was just as well that we managed to get it however, as more people arrived. Well I say people, I mean Will & Gloria, and then in the most pleasant surprise of the evening, in walked Craig with his girlfriend Sophie. Due to scheduling misunderstandings, it turned out that Craig was free to join us.

Initially a few of us, myself included, didn’t sit with everyone in what was now the ‘Simply Syndicated’ space. It wasn’t a case of us being deliberately unsociable but England were playing France in the Six Nations Rugby tournament so myself, Jeny & Dales found ourselves in the other corner of the pub. A bonus was that Mike Storer (from The Definitive Word fame) is also a massive Rugby Union fan so we got talking to him quite a bit. Thankfully I didn’t have any problems saying hello to him, or Craig (who had also sat with us for a bit).

By the time, the match finished – England narrowly losing, and no, I don’t want to talk about it – it was time to join the party. By now plenty of alcohol had been drunk, all of varying colours. This pub had beer that was green. Fracking green! The north of England is a weird place.
It’s difficult to single out highlights objectively, so I wont bother. I had the good fortune to be sitting in between Will & Craig, which gave Mr Bevan an opportunity to show off his new-found fame on YouTube to me (Sophie said she’d have to get him to do the housework to keep him grounded). And I also used this chance to congratulate Will on his TV debut. I say congratulate, I mean take the piss out of.

As the bell rung for last orders, Mr Tristram suggested we all head to the Fab Café as that was still open. There was no objection from anyone, as if there would be. As we left the Vic, confusion briefly reigned as some people had already started walking off but Boz wanted a group photo first, as he, Tim & Greg (The Big Lebowski) opted not to join us and go back to the hotel. We called after the group that had gone ahead of us to come back, but they didn’t hear us. This led to me having run after them to catch them up and after explaining the situation, Gloria (who I hadn’t even said hi to yet) said in no uncertain terms that everyone would have to come to them and we could take the photo there. Realising that Mohammed wasn’t going to come to the mountain, I then tailed it back to The Vic and in the end we got almost everyone in one place for the photo. Unfortunately there was the odd face missing but given the drunken state most of us were in at this stage I think it was quite impressive we managed to get as many of us as we did in one place.

Now you may think why did Boz, Tim & Greg not come along to Fab? Well to be fair they did have a long journey back but I think on some level they knew where the night was heading. You know how in disaster movies animals can always sense danger first? Well it was if they were the birds that left Pompeii and flew to Rome long before Vesuvius erupted.

As we headed to Fab, I found myself walking alongside Rich. Throughout the night words had been exchanged between us but there had been no formal introduction. All I could think of was that it was almost midnight and I still hadn’t said hello. Maybe Rich could sense this, maybe he realised that he and I had barely spoken, maybe in his drunken state he wasn’t thinking at all. Regardless, he turned to me, extended his hand and said “You’re Shane, aren’t you?” The proverbial Band-Aid had been ripped off, quick and painless. I apologised for not saying hi earlier. Rich nonchalantly shrugged and said, “That’s alright”. Now that I no longer had that to worry about, I could focus solely on having fun.

And what fun was had, I don’t think I’ve danced so much since I was at uni. Not long after getting in there I finally started chatting to Gloria. I may have made her sound somewhat uptight earlier. Well, she’s not like that in the slightest. She really seemed in her element and was sporting what can only be described as what looked like bowling shoes with heels. I guess she wants to look classy whilst knocking the pins over down the alleys (not a euphemism).

The Fab Café itself is the perfect place for a meeting of the geek minds, as cult paraphernalia adorned the walls. Star’s Wars & Trek were represented, as was Doctor Who (I made many covetous glances towards the Daleks in that place). It was a citadel of nerdery, which meant that there was little to no attitude from anyone there, making it so much easier for people to enjoy themselves. Mary acquiring/stealing a Soviet-Union style hat was a treat, especially when the owner tried to take it back from her. My personal favourite moment was when Rich, Craig & Will all gave each other a look as a particular song was played. To be honest, I didn’t recognise it, but it sounded quite 80’s. This was given credence when the aforementioned three headed to the dance floor and rolled up the sleeves on their tops, right up to their shoulders. The ‘Ralph Macchio’ look, if you will (watch ‘The Karate Kid’ if you don’t know what I mean).

But a special mention has to go to Allison. I think we know what happens when Popeye eats a can of spinach. Something similar happens to Walli after she’s been at the red wine. Apart from the odd cigarette break, I don’t think she stopped dancing until we left, and that was after 3am. Where this woman got her energy from is beyond me, and to be honest I think she could have kept dancing for longer. She was literally the last SimSynner standing.

I could go on, as there are things from the meet I haven’t yet mentioned, but I think I’ve gone on long enough. Only to add in closing, that I was always expecting to have a good time meeting everyone, but the reason I think it surpassed my expectations is because I already had met them, I just didn’t realise it. If you’ve been a part of these forums for long enough, meeting the SimSynners in person is very similar to the interaction you’ve had with them online. While there’s an initial nervousness in the introductory procedure, that disappears within about a minute. Even after taking ages to talk to Rich & Gloria, once I’d got that out of the way then there were no problems interacting with them after that. At no point was I struggling for things to talk about, indeed there’s plenty of things that I’d earmarked for conversation that I never needed to use in the end. The best way for me to sum it all up is this – It was as if the forums had come to life, with plenty of booze.

I can only hope that these meet-ups become a regular thing as apart from anything else, I think it shows Simply Syndicated in its best light. What I think SimSyn has done is give so many of us a place to share our thoughts, likes, dislikes, as well as finding solace when we go through tough times. And we’re never made to feel guilty or self-conscious about it. And that’s because it’s exactly what the podcasters of this network are like. Just like us. That’s why every single one of us had such a good time on the 20th March. Because we were around people just like us. That’s why I should never have worried about saying hello to Rich, Gloria or anyone affiliated with the greatest place on the Internet. Because they’re just like us.