Meet your new SOC

This one's for the Green geeks among you I'm afraid - I'm back from conference so normal blogging will resume tomorrow. However, a few bits of news from what was a really enjoyable conference (for those of you who don't know - this is by no means a guaranteed experience!)

Firstly I had two people tell me they joined the Party through reading this blog - which is something I'd never really thought about before. I've always thought about the Daily (Maybe) as a personal space where I'm building a case for progressive, green, left politics. In my own idiosyncratic way. At best I'd always assumed it would help create a more ideologically rich environment - and therefore a more interesting and attractive one. So to hear it had such a direct effect was really pleasing!

Secondly I had the strangest experience in that I ending up autographing not one but two copies of the Total Politics Guide to blogging in which I've written the chapter on Green Blogging (page 31). Surreal, but really fun at the same time, I'm not sure this will start a trend.

Talking of blogging, the fringe with Sunny Hundal and launching Green Home went really well I think. There was a bit of a buzz around about it and it was very good natured and fun - and I think every conference needs a session where there's a bit of laughter to even out some of the more serious stuff.

The other fringe I ran, with Peter Tatchel and Yasmin Mather from Hands off the People of Iran was really well attended and interesting. The discussion was wide ranging and Peter in particular was on fiery form.

He raised the interesting point about what the Green Party reps on the Stop the War Coalition national committee do so I thought I'd follow that up and went to chat to our Campaigns Co-ordinator. He told me that they had difficulty getting people to go and although we had three spaces we rarely filled them... so if you want to volunteer for the role (and are actually involved in anti-war work obviously) I advise having a chat to our Campaigns coordinator, who is more than likely to welcome your assistance with open arms.

Simultaneously to chairing the Iran meeting I was also giving a hustings speech for the prestigious Standing Order Committee (SOC) election. Not many people are that good at multi-tasking are they? Actually my friend Ute read out a statement and I'm glad to hear people laughed in the right places and clapped at the end. It must have done some good as I got elected.

In fact four of us were elected for a five person committee with the fifth place taken by the odious RON (there were nine candidates in all). So we'll probably end up co-opting someone for that fifth place, no rush though.

For the first time ever we have a SOC group photo at the beginning of our term. From left to right we have Pippa Lane, Jim "peas" Jepps, Mark Hill and Payam Torabi (RON's hiding in the bushes somewhere). The slightly awkward smiles are due to the photographer taking about two or three minutes to actually take the damn photo.

Meet your new SOC - abuse them wisely