In September last year, a barcamp was held in Bath. It was called, somewhat predictably but not unreasonably, “bathcamp“. 🙂
I blogged about it at the time, but in short it was a fascinating weekend that brought together a great group of people.
But it didn’t end there.
There will be another bathcamp event, but the organiser Mike Ellis had the very neat idea to keep the momentum going in between the full barcamp weekends with a series of monthly evening meetups.
The first Wednesday of every month, BathCamp becomes an evening event at Revolution in Bath. It works really well, keeping the sense of community going in between the full barcamps. Many turn up early, in time to have a drink and something to eat in the bar downstairs. You get a group of people all sat together, but it’s very welcoming and friendly. You can sit next to anyone there, and get involved the conversation – not always the case with every geeky meetup I go to.
At about 8pm-ish, everyone goes upstairs for an informal presentation on some tech topic of interest. Then there is a break where everyone gets themselves a drink, and talk and bounce around ideas about the presentation.
Then another (generally somewhat related) presentation from a second speaker, and another chance to talk about the topic with everyone else there. These bits make a difference – sometimes these events can drift into “turn up, listen to talk, go home”. But so far, the Bathcamp meetups have been a long way from that.
The talks so far…