BarCamp Blackpool

Warmup to BarCamp Blackpool

This was my first ever BarCamp, and I attended with my friends; @martinrue, @AWicher, and @jedw. I got the train up to Manchester on the Friday (had to do Nottingham to Manchester standing up... for two hours gah). Friday night I was reading over and making changes to the presentation Martin was going to do.

Due to stay up and messing with Martin's presentation we only got around 2 hours sleep before we had to be up to catch our lift with @jedw. Upon arriving we parked up, and checked into the hotel and had a quick McDonalds breakfast.

#bcblackpool

We arrived at the Pleasure Beach and registered for our chippy teas and our beer tokens, which we eventually not need to use (thanks to those who didn't turn up and Yahoo! Developer Network). After @ruby_gem's introduction everyone was scheduling their talks.

There were a lot of interesting talks listed ranging from Ernie the Electronic Organist, to a talk on British Sign Language. I attended talks on a BBC Micro that plays the church organ, Amazon EC2, and Martin's code injection talk.

For lunch we had a buffet-style lunch paid for by the CTI Group! There was a ton of food so plenty for seconds. After dinner we chilled in a booth for a bit and got chatting with @perki. We decided we should all download the internet. Unfortunately after discussing this the Wi-Fi went down, so the internet was unavailable. Once all the talks had finished we went for a chippy tea, the portions were large.

Once we got back to the venue the main room was changed with plenty of tables ready for Paul Sylvester who was performing a magic show for everyone. Who is Magics Best Kept Secret, but should probably rebrand as Magics Most Tweeted About, after BarCamp Blackpool. Provided great entertainment in the form of comedy and magic. The night rounded off with chatting to some cool people and finally falling alseep around 3am when everyone came back from some club they went to.

I was really pleased I attended this weekend, met some really cool new people; @timhastings, @jreast, @mheap, @ruby_gem, @kianryan, @perki, @plip, @daveverwer, and more.

I have my ticket for BarCamp Manchester, hopefully catch up with a few people there!