Mary Cooper, Member 23844, got in touch with us about the Romantics exhibition at Tate Britain in London. Apparently, it has much of interest to the cloudspotter:
http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/romantics-tate/

So I am going to visit the exhibition when I'm up in London on Thursday of this week (17 November, 2011). I'll be heading there soon after lunch. If any London-based members would like to go along at the same time, it would of course be nice to meet up.

If you're interested, leave a comment here and we can fix up a time/place to meet.

Best wishes,
Gavin
--
Gavin Pretor-Pinney
(Society founder)

What a nice idea, Gavin - I'd have loved to have joined you but, unfortunately, I can't do a weekday (until next July, Thurdays are still teaching days). Hope the exhibition is good and will still be on during the holidays as I want to get up to the Leonardo exhibition then, if I can.

I was wondering though.......do you think we could ever organise a Cloud Conference, somewhere, sometime? I would be happy to help in any way I could and it would be so nice to have an event that would give Cloud Appreciators from far and wide the chance (and excuse!) to gather and learn a little and chat a lot. What do you think - what does anyone think?

Gini

Gini,

I'm sorry it has taken me so long to reply.
Firstly, the Romantics exhibition was great. It definitely had lots of paintings of interest to cloudspotters. You should try to make it along some time if you get a chance.

Regarding a general society get-together, it is a nice idea. My only reluctance is that it sounds like a lot of work to organise. Also, when I have thought about it in the past, it always felt wrong to do a gathering in just one place with such an international society. I did once consider trying to find a big IT sponsor to enable some sort of virtual gathering. The idea was that people would get together in groups around the world and could all be linked up via webcams etc. I liked the fact that there would be no one place that everyone was meeting (rather cloud-like), minimal flights/travel and a variety of clouds across the different locations. It would be a big deal to get it all to work technologically, and I never got very far working out who the right sponsor might be.

I think that a more local gathering could still be a good idea. As you might know, there was one in County Cork in Ireland this summer past, which was fun – even though the clouds weren't behaving (this is inevitable, of course, for a cloud festival). They are planning another, up in Sligo, next summer.

If other people think that a big society gathering is a good idea, it might well be worth looking into. Thanks very much for your offer to help out. If you want to have a think about how it might work, you could always email me directly to discuss ideas.

Many thanks,
Gavin