Barcamp Manchester 3

Published September 07, 2010

I've not written about this yet, but a few weeks ago I attended the third Barcamp to be held here in Manchester, at the popular Madlab.

With only ~60 people, as opposed to the 200 or so at the previous one held in this city, it felt like a decidedly smaller affair. With these being the only two Barcamps that I've attended, I'm not much of a judge - however, I think it's fair to say that number 3 was a great success.

I'm not going to wax lyrical about why you should keep an eye out for Barcamps in your own city, I'll simply say that you should (they're great!). I had no idea what to talk about this time round (and not much of an idea last time either), but you shouldn't let that stop you going. I used my session to host a not-at-all to mildly successful game of internet-meme-cherades, but those few who got involved seemed to enjoy themselves - for at least 10 of my 30 minutes.

Bigger = Better?

The smaller Barcamp had a different feel to the larger one of the previous year, and if I'm being honest I can't help but prefer the larger version. I appreciate that these are, above all else, simply more expensive to run - and for what is a free event, then you can't really complain. However, it's the very nature of the un-conference style that the more people you have the higher the volume of sessions, and it's not a great leap to say that the more sessions you have, the higher the likelihood of finding a session in each block that you really want to see. There seemed to be, at least at some times, difficulty in filling up all the available sessions with talks.

Saying that, there were two standout talks for me. I didn't write down any names, so apologies for vagueness...

First was an (ocassionally patchy) Skype hookup to a project in India, where they built a hackspace not dissimilar to Madlab except that it was made entirely out of warehouse grade shelving equipment. It was fascinating to hear about, and even more interesting when we got a guided tour via webcam.

The second was a talk about an audio processing type language whose name escapes me. It's biggest standout feature for me was how it was a language programmed entirely via visual interface, rather than the text based methods of the majority of programming languages. I don't want to downplay it's power here, but it seemed to me to be a great language for getting youngsters interested in what you can do with computers.

The Future

I can only imagine how much effort it must take to organise an event like this, and don't envy anyone who takes on the task. Saying that, I hope someone does as these are great events and I for one would love to see more than one of these being hosted in Manchester every year.

I've already stated that I'd prefer to see bigger events, and I don't think I'm alone in saying that I'd happily pay £10-20 (and probably more) for entry to an event like this. Especially if it was an overnighter, with room for you to lay down in your sleeping bag... in the traditional Barcamp style. Though I have to admit, if it was inner-city I would find it difficult to avoid jumping in a taxi back to the flat. Perhaps there are interesting venues outside of the city centre that are worth considering? Is there an easy way to go about finding these venues? If not - perhaps there should be!

Thanks

I'd like to say thank you to all of those involved in organising what was a great event, and of course all those sponsors who helped make it happen. If you want to see more information about those involved, you can find it all here