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I have no words to explain what on earth is going on in Islington Wharf right now…
There was a problem with the water supply a while ago in April. GVA (the management agency) tried to fix it but something needed replacing which required the water to be turned off in Block B (125 apartments). I was in Copenhagen when this happened so I came back and everything was the same as before, except when I turned on the tap to wash a glass – It blew out so quick it took the glass out of my hand and broke in the sink.
A few days goes by and its clear something is not right…
I and others spotted and reported a massive pool of water in the ground floor stairwell. It seemed to be running down the inside of the stairwell. Anyway before long GVA posted notes saying they were having to turn off the water not during the day like before but during the whole day and night. This was about Thursday. then it was communicated things were still not right and that would mean another 24hours of no water. 2 days of no water!
And when I say no water I mean absolutely no water from any taps in the flat. Yes no washing up, no dishwasher and no loo flash water. Luckily I tend to have a jug of water in the fridge and my kettle was full.
Anyway by Friday (today) it was posted around that not only will the water be off but it will be off till Tuesday evening…!
I was moaning before, but till Tuesday? over the May bank holiday! Well thanks… What a wonderful bank holiday weekend most of the people in Islington wharf will have… Here’s what GVA left us all under our doors, on the forums and facebook.
URGENT WATER SUPPLY WORKS
As you will be aware we have been working to try and resolve a problem with the mains water supply to the building. Following a review on site today and based on specialist advice we have received, we do not propose to undertake another temporary repair due to the risk of failure and health and safety implications if water should escape into the electrical intake room.
Contingency Plan
We have arranged for 3,000 bottles of fresh water to be delivered to site so there is 6 bottle of water by each apartment front door and there are spare bottles in the block B entrance. All other building systems will operate normally. A full permanent repair has been authorised and this will be completed on Tuesday. Our current information is that all residents will be able to return to their apartments on Tuesday evening.
Now bear in mind we’ve been told it will be fixed by a certain date a couple times before, I’m not feeling too confident about Tuesday evening.
To be frank I’m peeded off but I like many others haven’t really got anyone to blame or shout at. Yes we could shout at GVA or ISIS (the company who actually own the building and employee GVA as management agents) but its actually not there fault. They have been good (not perfect but good for once). Early in the week, we had a toilet in the caretaker office and a tap in the bin store to keep us fresh?
GVA and ISIS offered us the ability to stay in a hotel down the road near Piccadilly but for myself this is almost pointless. Instead I’m trying to get conformation about the costs, so I can head down to Bristol and just get away. And thats how I and maybe many others just feel like.
Its all the small things which you forget like water to brush your teeth, toilet water to flush, water to clean the dishes, water to clean our clothes. If the water doesn’t come back on Tuesday night, it will be almost a week without water. This is bad bad news and to be honest if you were in my position you would also be peed…!
Won’t even remind you about the state of our garden right now too…
Yes the wall fell down and there is now a massive 2 story drop into a carpark…
You can can’t help but feel like the whole place is falling apart…!
Update…
The water was turned back on Tuesday evening at about 5pm, and work has started to fix the 2 story drop down to the carpark. ISIS and GVA can count themselves very lucky they didn’t end up all over the BBC news site like this almost exact carbon copy event in Yorkshire. Although it was for about double the amount of people and they were much more organised and took advantage of the open web. No point in moaning about it on a closed Facebook group, nothing will change and your also playing into there hands because no one else can see the problem.
I was featured on Slideshare.net today and Dianavcarrico left me a tweet…
Hi Ian, just saw your featured slideshare presentation and I hope you’re doing fine right now! Inspiring for sure! *
Great to know its still inspiring people… Can’t wait for the TedXManchester Video, because I’ll certainly be sharing it with my family and friends. I’ve also been asked to maybe do it again at another event, so look out for the same but less tears…
As previously mentioned… I’m thrilled to be talking at TedXManchester after masterminding the very first one in BBC Manchester over 2 years ago. Unfortunately the event sold out months ago and the idea of opening up more space so people could watch, wasn’t possible.
However, I’m happy to say there will be a live web stream on the day and you can watch it from the comfort of your own machine.
Hello Manchester TEDsters,
We’re happy to announce the detais of the webcast for TEDxManchester. The webcast starts at 1pm this Monday, 13 Feb.
You will find it at.. http://www.TEDxManchester.com/live.htm Our event hash tag is #TEDxMCR for all your social chatter.
What exactly I’ll be talking about is still a secret but if you look at the last two times I’ve spoken this month it might help.
I can tell you its going to be highly personal and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this one. You won’t want to miss it as its going to have people talking for a long time afterwards hopefully. The slide above is from the presentation by the way…
I’m presenting in the 2nd half of TedXManchester after 1530 with,
- David Erasmus
- Tara Shears
- Brendan Dawes
While at 1300,
- Mary Anne-Hobbs
- Tom Bloxham
- Dan O’Hara
- Someone still to be confirmed (wondering if they can beat the Astronaut at TedxSalford)
Pretty much every week I tend to work away from the office. When I first started getting back to work from #mybrushwithdeath, I would work from home quite a bit but now I’m back full time (since early last year) I’ve found myself working out of the Northern Quarter every week. (for those outside Manchester, the Northern Quarter is like the East end of London. Its full of run down shops and a independent vibe)
Some would say, something like yeah yeah working from the Northern Quarter, yeah yeah really!
But to be honest I tend to get a ton of stuff done on those days when I’m in the Northern Quarter. Maybe even more than I get when I’m at work sometimes. How can that be? I have no idea, till I heard Paul Fenwick on ITConversations.
When I’m in my office, I’m much better at working.
When I’m in the cafe, I’m much better at thinking.
When I’m at home, I like to think I’m better at working on my talks but i’m much better at mindcraft…
It isn’t that I work more effectively out of a coffee shop like North Tea Power than Media City UK. I’m actually experiencing a different kind of workflow while in North Tea Power, a creative work flow. This explains why I wrote most of my techpaper for Perceptive Media while sitting drinking tea. So from my point of view lots of things getting done including adhoc meetings, lovely lunches and interesting discussions.
Of course I’m not saying I don’t get this at work but its certainly quite different…
I’d certainly like to get RescueTime installed (they claim to be creating a official x64 version for Linux very soon) so I can get a better grasp of what I am doing differently… But in the meantime, I’m certainly reaping the benefits of being able to work in different environments, I’d highly recommend more people do the same if ever possible
I bought another John Lewis Umbrella recently while in Bristol.
My good friend Ross (recently joined twitter), said I was nuts buying such a expensive umbrella, but I explained its the only way to deal with Manchester’s changeable weather. The Umbrella is strong and seems to deal with the gusts much better than most other umbrellas. Plus its small and compact so fits in my laptop bag, or my inside jacket pocket. Yes it was in the lady section of John Lewis but only because theres this stereotype than men carry golfing size umbrellas.
He made the point that I could buy about 17 cheap pound shop umbrellas for the price of my John Lewis one but I love the up and down button and you can’t beat it when going in and out of doors. I did try the M&S umbrella but it felt cheap and unstable in comparison, plus it didn’t have the up and down mechanism (manual sucks).
Anyway, after using it straight away after buying it to keep the rain off in Bristol. I noticed it wasn’t so snappy as the ones I’ve had in the past. Which got me thinking maybe theres a way to hack the umbrella so its snappy and much more responsive?
Yes folks, its time to hack my umbrella… and I’m not the only one but I’m doing it for different less flashy reasons
Of course if I do start hacking it, there will be photos and a detailed analysis of the hacking.
Watch this space…
I’ve enjoyed having VivID Lounge right below where I live. It was like having a local pub (I assume) but it was a European styled lounge. However there were problems right from the start and it looks like its the end of the road for this current version of the lounge.
This will be a very difficult blog post to write and I’m going to leave out peoples names and dates because its not really fair. Its also worth noting I’m not really in a position to be talking because I’ve never opened a bar or ever run an physical establishment. So really this is the thoughts from a outsiders view. I’ll probably get peoples backs up but, hey I’m doing it for the right reasons I believe… and I would happily say most of the same stuff to the previous owners of VivID lounge…
VivID lounge was one of those jokes for the longest time. Some of us believed it was a hoax by ISIS to get interest in the space. However it turned out to be real soon after I moved into Islington Wharf, with a paper survey through everyones postbox. Months after, things started happening. First a council application for food and alcoholic drink then one for a late night licence. It was clear it wasn’t a hoax after all. Then finally things started happening in the glass space, including a call for employment.
Due to open in July in time for the Ice Cream Festival, it didn’t quite happen and it was another 3 months before it actually opened, missing most of summer. It also opened with no big fanfare or announcements. The owners said they didn’t want a big opening.
So for months, people have walked past it and seen its open but haven’t gone in. Don’t get me wrong sometimes it was busy but generally its quiet and there 1-5 people sitting reading the news, enjoying a coffee. Why…?
There’s a whole host of reasons I believe… but here’s my thoughts…
- Engagement with the residents and residents committee…
I’m on the committee and also form the social committee and although we had a very successful night for the residents just recently (pics you can see here)… It wasn’t enough. I had planned to do feedback sessions to the residents about whats going on but got busy, and it didn’t happen. Ultimately I would suggest that more work needed to be done to engage residents. Not just sticking flyers through there post boxes, but actually banging on doors and massive discounts just to get people through the door everyday. This seemed to fall between the cracks of the owners and the residents committee, I can only suggest if we had known things were going so badly we would have got involved far earlier - Get Decor
Yes named after a favorite tune but ultimately the decor of the lounge was very uncomfortable and unfriendly. Plastic white chairs with white tables and only one sofa (next to the toilet). What it really needed was to take a note from places like North Tea Power, NoHo, Apothica, Common, etc. Simple cheap sofas with simple cheap wood tables. It would feel a lot more friendly with all those wood/earthy tones instead of stark white/orange colour scheme. Its a lounge… and the décor just didn’t quite match what you think about when you think European Lounge. - Environmental factors
VivID always struck me as very light and breezy due to the massive amounts of glass throughout but at night it always had the lights on very high… It was always a mood killer and although they had tea lights, they were over powered by the heavy lights throught-out the space. They really could have done with killing most of the nights and using many more candles (but there might be other reasons for this) - Taking feedback on the chin
In the early days, it was mentioned many times by many people that it would be great if VivID lounge would do a cooked breakfast on the weekends. VivID would only do healthy/hearty breakfasts containing porridges and muesli… The excuse was sometimes “the kitchens not big enough…” “We don’t want to be a greasy spoon” “If we gave everyone what they wanted… we would be bankrupt.” It was so bad, that people would come to me and moan to me about it! So in the end I ended up telling them again on behalf of others. If I had known things were so bad earlier, I would have been much more forceful at the very start. - Celebrate every moment
VivID missed its original opening date by a few months, but even when they opened it never did a launch event… This is a crying shame because many people didn’t know it was open for a while and even if they did, there was no real reason to go and check it out. I could mention social objects here but I won’t… People like an excuse to be there, thats why the quiz nights worked. Lastly there was no closing party (from what people tell me). There wasn’t even a “thanks everyone for supporting us type thing” (I wasn’t there on the last Saturday, so I’m going on hear-say), instead there was a message on the facebook group. So much for celebration… - Its not just about us…
Islington Wharf wasn’t the only flats in the area. Yes it was right underneath but actually there was Chips, Quantum, Millerners Wharf, Piccadilly Basin, etc, etc.. I don’t personally know how much effort went into engaging with those people but theres been a estimation that at least 1200 other people are a short walk from VivID. Even if they could convince 10% to come in regularly that would be great for business. VivID is also on the way to the Manchester City ground and the couple of times they tried selling things to the fans, its been very well received. I guess what I’m saying is, I believe there is enough footfall and someone will make a killing - Whats on the menu?
The menu was a mess of new and old items. Some of the old ones were no longer sold and the new ones you had to ask for. On top of that, there was only a few choices in certain categories. For example, only one black tea (my own bug bear) but about 4 different types of fruit & a green tea… Many times I wanted a earl grey but couldn’t get one. Near the end I learned they had them but it wasn’t on the menu or board! Seriously… This is systematic of the problems with the menu as a whole. When dim sum was added to the menu I was excited and told people about it, but later when a friend came in for dim sum, they couldn’t see it on the menu, so was disappointed. This is the same case for the fried breakfast… I understand the menu was fluid but they really needed paper menus to reflect this.
There are many more but these are the main ones…
Of course it would be wrong of me to just highlight the negatives… It was a centre piece in the islington wharf community and the amount of people who we met there was great. As I said before I imagine its like a old town pub which all the locals hang out and socialise. In actual fact VivID lounge was the social object. It was the reason why people left there flats and chatted to each other. Its the reason why I spent a ton of money at VivID lounge even though the coffee and tea wasn’t as good as they could have been (North Tea Power can sleep well). The staff were generally friendly (specially some of the women, who were very cute), and the people you found hanging around were always cool and friendly. I’m sure there were many friendships which were formed via Vivid and as it seems will out live VivID.
Once again its a shame and to be fair its a difficult time for all independent coffee shops (Outlet closed down a while ago too) and you’ve got to be prepared to not make any money for at least 2 years it seems. Real businesses are a total different game from what I’m use to and I have total respect for the people involved in making vivID lounge…. I hope there not too hard hit and they will bounce back very soon…
Of course if your interested in taking over VivID lounge, do get in touch… I’ll happily pass your details on to the owners. I’m very confident with the right understanding of the mistakes above, enough money and once the new tram station and marina opens it will be a killer coffee bar
Wednesday we had a very successful night of werewolf…
I didn’t have my DSLR with me, so I only captured a few low rez photos of the action. Almost everything just worked…
Working with Larkin About (remember that ARG) was a great success and I’m sure the reason we got different players is simply because they were involved. The Location was great because the bar owner really wanted to help make it a successful event. He (Mike) even said next time he will happily do service to the circle, so people don’t even have to leave the game to get drinks. Its also staged happy hour when we’re playing, so cocktails start off at 2 for £5 and rise to 2 for £9 a few hours later. And to be honest the cocktails are actually not bad at all. I was drinking Cosmopolitans (as I do) and they were actually much better than average. Not quite the quality of NoHo, Scho Rehab or Aphotica but not far off.
Barcelona bar is a great venue with the slightly raised platform where we were playing werewolf and the space around it for people who were dead (as such) or just people not playing… The raised platform isn’t exactly round but its good enough to fit a good number of people looking at each other.
Playing the Thing to start the proceeding was a inspired thought, because it meant as people joined us, they could also just join the next round. In the end we played the thing then 2 different games of werewolf.
Everyone really enjoyed themselves and we played till bar closing time…
Only two slight negatives
- Not having food and consuming a ton of lovely cocktails (yes someone had to do it). Barcelona bar is due to start doing pancakes, and I had thought they were doing them already. So assuming I would be able to grab a sandwich somewhere I thought a savoury pancakes might work. Next time I’m sure they will be up and running in this area
- A lot of the regular players from MadLab, BarCamps, etc… didn’t turn up, which was a shame. However we did have a ton of new people and we even roped a couple in for a small drink, into the game actual game.
Anyway we’ve decided to do Werewolf on a bi-monthly schedule. So look out for details of the next game in January 2012… Thanks to everyone who turned up, and remember I am never the werewolf…
Manchester Werewolf Chapter is back after a long delay and this time we’ve teamed up with the guys at Larkin About. Larkin about are the Manchester equivalent of Hide & Seek. They do social experimental games in and around Manchester. So its a perfect match. If this goes well, there will be many more…
On Wednesdays November 23rd, the Manchester Werewolf Chapter and Larkin’ About will be running a game of Werewolf at Barcelona Bar in the Northern Quarter. It’s totally FREE!
Werewolf is a simple game of strategy and deception, played by a large group of people.
The game is all about making accusations, lying, bluffing, second-guessing, and social engineering.
All are welcome! We have a great location with a bar because we all know deception is thirsty work. The event is suitable for all levels of experience from absolute newbie to Werewolf pro. We hope to continue to host games of Werewolf as a regular event from this date onwards.
To register your interest, please visit our Facebook event page, or send us an email to larkin.about2009@gmail.com.
Just in-case you had any reasons why you shouldn’t be at the Mozilla Festival? Here’s a whole bunch of reasons why you should be there. As most of you already know, we’re running the Dj and Vj Challenges during the Mozilla Festival event in association with Future Everything, Mozilla and BBC R&D.
We’re going to explore possible futures in the fields of Dj and Vj cultures with a aim to go live with something next year at the Future Everything Festival.
The whole event is at my previous college (Ravensbourne) which moved to its new location next to the Dome in North Greenwich. I’ve never checked out the new look college but if its anything like the new Salford University in Media City UK it looks to be something special and a great place to do a challenge like this.
Of course you want to be part of this… So why not sign up now and I’ll see you there in just under a months time…
“FLOSS” (Free/Libre/Open Source Software), and “FOSS” (or F/OSS, Free and Open Source Software).
I attended the Floss Unconference fest yesterday at Manchester Conference centre (a location I had planned to use for BarCampManchester2 due to their ability to do overnights and excellent warren like structure).
The event was reasonable but not well attended, which was a shame. It needed about another 30 people to feel more busy and active. Not quite sure why people never came out for it…? But to be honest I only spotted it by hearing a tweet from Teknoteacher. Anyhow, at the end of the day there were lightening talks and I jumped at the chance to talk about software which really needs to be developed on Linux. I’ve adopted this post to apply to most Floss type things…
First up…
- What happened to Say my name desert? The developer moved to announcefy but frankly its a downgrade and I’m just about to uninstall it because they’ve been talking about plugins for yonks and they still don’t exist. Instead I just installed Call Announcer which seems to do what I want, but we’ll see…
- In the same vein, locale what happened? I’ve switched to the hyper geeky Llama which operates based on radio cell towers so in theory it shouldn’t eat so much power as locale. But to be honest I’ve not really had time to mess with it and tweak it.
Now to the desktop…
- Rescue time is great but the Linux client is hell to install and run. But to be fair at least their is one and the developers do recognise it. This fits perfectly with the quantified self movement and needs more development effort!
- Widgets on Ubuntu need a rethink… Screenlets have been very quiet in years. Although to be fair, OMG! Ubuntu might have a solution to put KDE widgets on to Ubuntu.
- I mentioned data portability apps and what I was thinking about was the state of web pipelines such as Conduit, Yahoo Pipes and If this then that. If this then that has certainly kicked up the dust in this area but I really want to see more focus here, specially in the FLOSS community
- The home server market is still there and slowly growing, but still theres no real traction in the FLOSS community it seems. Microsoft stopped innovating too which is perfect time for the FLOSS community to get a leg ahead. Someone shouted out about some project, but later when questioned admitted it was vaporware right now. If/when Amahi finally shift to Ubuntu I may switch to using that, because thats the best I can find.
- Why can I not find a Google Tasks application? Right now I’m using the Webframe widget (hence my bug bear with widgets) but it doesn’t cache for offline support, so its not a good solution. I hear Gnome 3.4 has a webOS style system, so you can run HTML5 apps natively but right now all I can find is stuff about Waylands which runs apps in a web browser. On the Unity front there seems to be some traction… If only Tasque or Tomboynotes would sync with Google Tasks!
I’m sure theres plenty more but these are my thoughts right now…
Its Monday evening and BarCampMediaCity is still deep in my thoughts for many reasons.
It was a classic BarCamp with lots of incredible talks mixed in with a feeling of something new was happening.
As we opened the door on BarCampMediaCity, people started to making there way into the Quay house space and were impressed by what they were seeing. Everything was running smoothly with security plus registration and people were slowly spreading out through the 5th floor complex. By the time of the welcome talk we had just under 200 people in the room.
The make up of the 200 was a mix of new and old faces, but what was remarkable was the percentage of woman. Compared to other BarCamps I’ve been to, this one ranks up there with the likes of BarCampLondon in gender equality maybe. Quite fitting that we had the geeks of London (the people now running barcamplondon) producing this barcamp. BarCampManchester have always been slanted towards male but with the help of the Geeks girls in residence, BBC hosting it and lots of thought from the barcamp team, the results were incredible.
Not only that, the age range of BarCampers incredible! I had only seen such a diverse age range at BarCampLiverpool, now thats something BarCampMediaCity certainly beats even BarCampLondon on…
We had roughly 225 confirmed for the BarCamp after the original waves of about 300 public tickets over all. On the day we had just over 200 people come along over the course of the weekend.
During the welcome talk one of the team jumped in with a clarification on the overnight stay. This caused a disturbance, with people wondering exactly what the situation was. This came back to bite in a major way later in the night.
The event shifted along well during the day as the sessions kicked off.
I thought I’d put in my talk early in the schedule, in the end I decided to bring up the paper I’m about to start reading titled piracy is the future of television. I used trakt.tv as example of whats possible when you look at what the cutting edge/darknet/early adopters are doing. It was a nice session but I picked the wrong space for a good talk. I should have picked one of the spaces with a more intimate feel. Anyway a nice discussion kicked off with the diverse crowd, which included content producers, artists, early adopters, etc.
There was a nice, chilled vibe throughout the event which was great. Everything seemed to be going to plan. The talks were all really interesting and so diverse which was excellent. I went to talks on dynamic Bayesian networks for working out real smiles vs fake smiles (something I’m sure BBC R&D will be interested in), How to rob a bank, evil overlord’s guide to security, The culture of the dj, the true dubstep, a demo of future iplayer development, how to get a job at the BBC, hacking the kinect, What you don’t know about American TV shows, would you take your clothes off in public, mixing cocktails, etc, etc…
Another series of talks centred around inspiring the next generation into the tech sector. Computing in schools was a theme for sure with at least 3 different talks around the subject. The most surprising was the code lab one, which was presented as an BBC initiative. In that talk I turned and looked at Simon and gave him the look of, “what on earth, do you know about this?” to which he replied with a blank look on his face saying… “I know nothing, do you?” By the end we had tweeted about it and it had been re-tweeted to death.
It turns out, but we didn’t know at the time, it was a proposal rather than a commissioned thing. It was a little cheeky but you got to hand it to Alan O’Donohoe who was behind it and brought some amazing cookies to BarCampMediaCity from the kitchen of the school he works at. Actually its maybe worth giving the school a little plug on Alan’s behalf, Our Lady’s Catholic High School in Preston
Its actually worth noting most of the talks at BarCampMediaCity were amazing, its well worth going into some details about some of the better ones. Here’s my favorite ones…
How to Rob a Bank
I can’t explain how amazing this talk really was. Tim’s energy drives you through the different problems you would encounter if you were going to rob a bank. Want to know what the answer is? Well Tim points out that a large percentage of robberies are inside jobs, so getting a job at a bank is maybe a very good start.
A little known fact about US TV (or, Why you don’t exist)
Katie one of the girl geeks in residence, gave a great talk an area of Fandom which I had never really seen before. She put up the talk notes on our lanyrd page thankful, so you can read the notes there and check out this massive interlinked map.
Since American TV shows love doing crossover episodes, it becomes apparent that if St. Elsewhere and Homicide: Life on the Street both exist in the same TV universe, so do many other TV programs. Nerds on the internet have established a network of over 280 shows (and counting) which all coexist, implied by crossovers, cameos or references – and when we delve deeper, some interesting facts can be deduced…
Mixing Free Cocktails
Following one of the most famous BarCamp talks ever – How to mix the perfect Margarita at BarCampLondon3 by Andy Budd
Chris Garrett decided to bring cocktails to BarCamp. He even went as far as creating a special version of El Presidente and named it the Ian Forrester *blush*
If you want to make your own Ian Forrester, have a read of Chris’s blog post…
This would be my go-to drink when I lived in Bristol and spent far too much time in Haus Bar. A heady brew of White Rum (double measure, preferably of Diplomatico’s very good blanco reserva), a measure of triple sec (or Cointreau depending on preference), a measure of Vermouth and a dash of grenadine. Stir (don’t shake) with ice, strain in a cocktail glass and sip, slowly…
I actually forgot to take any Vermouth with me to BarCamp, so ended up using Slow Gin in the El Presidente. I added in a dash of Mint Bitters too, and thus the “Ian Forrester” was invented, named after the Presidente of BarCamp.
Would you strip naked in public if I asked you?
This session was one of the funnest I’d ever been to… It was a Art project by a guy who wanted to see if woman would take there clothes off in public if he asked them. Yes you heard me right… When I heard about it, I thought it was a wind up but the guy seemed deadly serious. Listening to him talk about the project, I instantly thought about the end sequence of A complete history of my sexual failings.
Things started to unravel when a lot of people asked many questions about his art project. The main line of questions seemed centre around what kind type of person does he ask? For example does he ask Men? does he ask older woman? etc, etc… He said he only asks woman who he found physically attractive…! I think everyone laughed out loud at that moment. His justification was even more funny, comparing taking pictures of beautiful objects and landscapes with only asking attractive woman. “You only take pictures of things you find attractive or beautiful…”
I honestly hadn’t laughed so much recently!
What is happiness talk
Its another one of those interesting talks which you would only get by running an open event like Barcamp. Alistair kicked it off and a whole bunch of theories were thrown around about helping people understand happiness but no conclusion was hit.
There was plenty of food but not a wasteful amount, everything which was put out was eaten and lunch, dinner, etc all went down well. Unforgeable I had to drive to a Chinese takeaway near Manchester to have dinner at 11pm because the curry had coconut in it and the veggie curry had chickpeas… I didn’t fancy eating even more carbs, specially if I was going to survive all night.
There was plenty to do for night time entertainment, including a massive gaming rig complete with xboxes and kinects. We had planned to set up the virtual maestro but with help from others, we still couldn’t get it to run correctly. Simon Lumb played a dj set in the cafe area, which set up the mood for the night. Unluckily I didn’t get a chance to play because I didn’t really have much chilled stuff and I had to make the trip out to the Chinese. Andy Mace, who was instrumental in helping us setup the Intenet connection for Will of Nexus Globalnet to setup the Wifi on top of. And frankly the wifi was flawless all weekend once it was setup and running late Friday night.
About 2330 we did an announcement to tell people who planned to stay late that the last tram will be leaving soon after midnight. What we should have done was made it clear what the situation was, and that might have been ending the event for the day.
Officially we could have people stay over if they don’t fall a sleep but unofficially if people fell a sleep security would give them a little nudge and ask them to have a coffee, redbull or go get some air. They would also have preferred people to stay together with active people, meaning people can keep an eye on each other, while they did close there eyes. Unforgettably this wasn’t communicated well and so a terrible rough night of trying to stay awake, finding hotels, sleeping on other peoples floors was had by about 30+ people.
I can say personally I am deeply sorry to everyone who had a terrible experience on the night, it was never meant to be that way and even I had brought my sleeping bag, indoor tent, change of clothes and towel to take advantage of the showers. I can’t put my finger on exactly what happened but its being taken very seriously and we are contacting everyone affected.
It did cast a shadow on a excellent event and I totally understand some of the questions people have been asking about the organisation of the barcamp. The Geeks of London are not to blame for this error of judgment, they delivered an excellent event, our job working as the hoster was to supply a canvas they could work on.
I always said the event will be a one time deal, I’m hoping next year Salford University become the hosters? But this is the end of my running barcamp experience. I had always wanted run one at the BBC and maybe 5 years of trying had warped my perception of risks and potential problems to the detriment of friends and participations. 5 years is a long time and like BBC Backstage maybe its that time…
So looking back, at the event. I will always remember Sunday morning and seeing the tired, angry and disappointed looks on friends faces. But I also remember Lalita D’Cruze’s face when she saw herself on a internal BBC flyer and when she took to the stage to replace the hired comedian and did a excellent job. Turning to Nicola and saying “Wow she’s really really good!” Seeing Katie Steckles present the total inside baseball Fandom which goes into tracking references to other TV shows inside of TV shows, (didn’t write down the site!) Feeling very proud of the massive audience Matt from BBC R&D got to his talk on Saturday. Loosing one of my werewolf cards on Sunday morning only to later have Mick give me his entire werewolf set because he enjoyed barcampmediacity so much. Slightly nervous why we didn’t know about BBC Code lab, specially with all the work Ant Miller had done in this exact area?
I did enjoy the event even with the Sunday morning problems. It was a great event and serves as a great introduction for a lot of people into the BarCamp/Unconference field. If we got more people interested in BarCamps, then great stuff. Hopefully some of them will go to other Barcamps and tell there friends, maybe a couple will even consider setting up there own?
Without the great sponsors the event would never go ahead…
Bytemark BigV hosting platform, Open Labs at Liverpool John Moores University, Indigo clothing who supplied the Tshirts which I didn’t get before they were all gone, Techsmith who supply the excellent screen capture software Camtasia Studio and TEK systems a recruiter of tech people globally
Great event which will go down for its excellent talks, fantastic location, great atmosphere along with the lack of clear signs about staying over.
It started so well but ended quickly when one of the 4 owners of Arcadia bar decided to give it up… Unforgeable we’ve were talking to the owner who decided to pack it in…
So that means no more lovely ladies doing there make up as they start there friday nights… (you got to love Creative Commons licensed images on Flickr) I’m sure they will be back in the future…
Now the future of Startup bar is in doubt but fear not, its not over… We’ll be looking for a new venue to host Startupbar… Till then you can sign up to the growing community on Facebook.
Josh and Martin said they would write up what happened a while ago. I didn’t know but Martin wrote up the evening on the Social Media Cafe website, some time ago.
Last week, a good 25 or so people joined us at Common to discuss the future of Social Media Cafe Manchester. We thought it would be good to give you a bit of an update on what was discussed and what happens next.
A number of successes for Social Media Cafe over the past (almost) three years were noted. Particular highlights included the way it’s spurred a wide range of projects and other events around the city, the debate about the impact of the iPad, and the talk by Greater Manchester Police about their Twitter experiment.
However, there was a general agreement that the event had lost a lot of its edge of late and that ‘social media’ was now such a commonly used term that the event’s name was heading towards irrelevance – you might as well have a monthly ‘Email Cafe’. Therefore, whatever Social Media Cafe becomes, it needs to capture the zeitgeist of digital culture and continue to attract a diverse crowd of professionals and hobbyists while welcoming anyone who wants an introduction to the Manchester digital ‘scene’.
There were mixed feelings as to the ‘professionalism’ expected from the event. While some felt there should be more time put into arranging ‘headline’ speakers weeks or months in advance, others felt that the relaxed, ‘human’ aspect of the event was more important than any ‘professional’ image.
With regard to a venue, there was a feeling that a regular, predictable home would be beneficial, allowing people to always know where they’ll find it. The Northern Quarter (including The Castle), Ancoats and Salford Quays (the BBC) were mooted as possible locations for venues, although there was a debate as to whether or not people would be willing to travel to the Quays.
Branding for the event was given some thought, with a suggestion that changing the name may ‘throw the brand out with bathwater’. Others thought a new name was a necessity, although there were no suggestions as to what that might be. Another change suggested was simplifying the online presence – suggesting that “The Ning” (this site) was perhaps not focused enough.
Thanks to everyone who came down to take part – it was really encouraging to see so many people turn up and offer their input. Julian, Josh and I will be meeting to make some decisions informed by the discussions we had last Tuesday and we’ll be posting an update soon with more information about what happens next.
There’s a whole number of comments from people but I’m not sure most of the people who were at the meeting even know the post went up sometime ago. I only found it when I was wondering if I could sign up to talk at the next one.
A lot of people don’t know but Social media cafe is based on Lloyd Davis’s Tuttleclub which was based on Ian Forrester’s London Geekdinners. So I’ve got form in this area…
So my thoughts are…
Yes keep the name, social media cafe Manchester works but I like even better the smc_mcr shorten version. Maybe moving away from the social media part by using smc_mcr could work?
A mix of headline and adhoc speakers seems to make sense, this does require more preparation but this can be a shared responsibility between a small group of people. Not the 25 who showed up but maybe 20-30% so 5 or so people, could share the responsibility. Different speakers attract different crowds of people, as I discovered doing Geekdinners, of course some will regularly come turn up no matter what. In Manchester and surrounding area there is plenty of talent so there’s plenty of space for dual tracks or a a single track. I personally could find something to talk about at every smc_mcr, sometimes it would be work related and sometimes it would be personal.
Having dual tracks is better but I’d put up with a single track of 3-4 speakers if they were short and kept the time for presentations down to about 10mins. Something like a double length ignite may work.
Moving it to Media City UK makes a lot of sense to me. I know people say its too far but frankly its once a month. If you can’t make it there because you can’t be bothered then, maybe Smc_mcr doesn’t actually need you. But I’m also thinking it should switch between venues (alternate). Sounds a little crazy but it could work and its certainly better than 3months one place, 1 month in another then another 3 somewhere different before having to find somewhere else. Smc_mcr is a good enough event to travel for.
I also don’t but this argument that there’s no venues in Manchester… Why not use Home sweet Home (which just opened up next to Commonbar), Speak to the people at Drip cafe and ask if they can stay open longer once a month, now Moon bar is open again I’m sure they will be looking for a regular influx of people. I’m also sure there’s been quite a few venues I’ve wondered pass who would love regular events like smc_mcr. My biggest bet was on the new vivid lounge which has a delayed opening once again. Point is, I’m sure with a little bit of work, I’m sure we’ll find somewhere suitable, it may not be in the Northern Quarter, but it will be within the city centre. Theres places like Rainbar which could be ideal. I refer to the Manchester map…
Something which never got talked about was charging for smc_mcr? No I don’t really like it too, but it means the venues in the city centre will be much more open to hosting such an event. Most bars do drink minimums, which can be easily hit with 50+ people. It might put some people off, but for the sake of having a quiet room with a projector, I’d certainly give it a shot.
What ever happens, its rapidly heading to the first Tuesday of the month… I got plenty of stuff to publicise including barcampmediacity.co.uk and salfordcinemaclub.wordpress.com.
