BarCamp Manchester in Review

By ian

The second BarCamp Manchester has come and gone. This year was a big success in many ways, but we definitely found a few areas for improvement. We had a slightly smaller crowd than last year due to some late promotion, but the sessions had more technical depth and there was still a great energy. Here’s a quick overview of what we tried this year and how it went.

Promoting BarCamp

Last year this was by far the hardest task in organizing the event. The greater Manchester area has a large number of tech-focused individuals, but almost no sense of community. There are pockets of people here and there, but for the most part communicating with the tech savvy population as a whole is nearly impossible. This year we counted on the buzz generated at last year’s event to serve as a promotion tool. Unfortunately, many people didn’t keep in touch and didn’t know about this year’s event. As a result, we only had about 65 people this year as opposed to the 75-80 that attended last year.

This taught us that no matter how interested people are in an event or activity, they won’t keep themselves informed unless there are regular reminders or updates. So, we’re working on some ideas to keep the community better connected year-round rather than just at the BarCamp Events.

Budgets are Stretchy

Last year we spent lots of time seeking out sponsors and getting enough money for a nice catered lunch and skimped on most other things. We were also afraid to ask for money, because we felt businesses wouldn’t go for it. Last year we asked a lot of companies each for a small amount of money. This year we focused on companies that we respected as members of the tech community and asked for a bit more. We also took a look at expensive costs like food and reduced them. In the end, we has about the same about of total sponsorship money, but we accomplished a lot more.

I also think that we helped improve our connections with CustomScoop, Ektron and Hatchling who have been helping BarCamp Manchester since we started. It’s good to see companies like this supporting this growing community. In the long run, people will appreciate the company’s that helped get things started more than those just looking for advertising after the community is established.

Geeks like to build stuff

One of the new things we tried this year was a Make room inspired (and sponsored by) Make magazine from O’Reilly. We had four competitions for building and/or designing things. We were a bit concerned that it wouldn’t go over well, but it turned out being a great addition. There are already some great photos on Flickr at the barcampmanchester group, as well as a good post from Dave Seah about his winning Chindogu entry. The Make room will definitely be making a return at the next BarCamp and we have even tossed around the idea of making a BarCamp event focus solely on impromptu building competitions.

In Summary

We learned just much at this second BarCamp as we did from the first. Last year we learned a lot about planning and logistics, this year we learned more about the community aspects. Over the next few months, we can start applying what we’ve learned to continue to improve things. Who knows, in a few years Manchester may be mentioned along side Seattle and San Fransisco when people are talking about web technology.