Recently there's been talk about what events BBC Backstage and myself have done in the North. For all the talk, I have not run a Manchester BarCamp and from a business point of view, I've not run anything like mashed or hackday. Instead we've been waiting and watching, I would say becoming a good citizen and looking where it makes sense to get involved. The BBC Manchester building on Oxford Road isn't ideal for large events unless we use a studio, so I thought. Since the Ubuntu 9.04 launch party which crammed about 80 people into our BBC Bar, I've been thinking about the ability to maybe support some kinds of camp events.
DrupalCampManchester was discussed ages ago and Dan did a great job putting the whole thing together. Being the host, I just stepped in when needed but generally I spent the weekend writing Java/XSL. Everything went well and a special thanks to Herm and Derek for there help from a BBC point of view. The only complaint we had was the heat which is currently broken. But generally there were about 80 smiling faces at the peak but even on Sunday the numbers didn't drop far below 50. Its certain the drupal uk community is certainly a lot tighter since this event.
From a BBC point of view, the event was relatively simple and cheap to host. The biggest cost is actually peoples time to help out. Having someone else also run the event took most of the management out of it. So whats next? TED-X Manchester seems to be next but the dates are TBA. Currently we're masterminding the idea of a Friday afternoon with a suitable event to follow it into the night.
