Andrew,
Glad that you have had time to "Decompress" from WB and OSHCamp.
Thank you, once again for putting together a great team that made the 3 days run seamlessly.
Great speakers on Friday and Saturday, plus all the Peeps that ran amazing workshops on the Sunday.
Al Wood and I thoroughly enjoyed our long weekend in HB. And our "garden shed" accommodation in Tod.
The future direction of OSHUG needs some serious discussion, but what you (and friends) have done in the last 14 years is exemplary.
Keep me informed.
All the best
Ken
On Thu, 21 Sept 2023 at 17:06, Andrew Back via oshug oshug@oshug.org wrote:
Hi All,
Slowly catching up...
It was really great to see folks once again at OSHCamp and WB, it had been far too long! Thank you also for the kind words.
Very cool to see the list being a bit more active and will try to do my bit in this respect.
Also great to hear that there is interest in hosting more meetups, both in London and outside of. Regarding the former, we used to move around quite a bit before the BCS became our latest home, and were hosted by BT, BBC and numerous other organisations in London, usually via a member or associate who worked there. Although perhaps not as convenient as having a regular base with a familiar AV setup, it did seem to sometimes draw in new people.
Regarding meetings outside of London, we have previously hosted events at Sheffield and Kent (Canterbury) universities, which worked well.
A mixture of both in and outside London events would be nice, but of course it all comes down to people taking the lead to organise. For events outside London I'd suggest a simple criteria along the lines of:
- A local lead organiser (or one with local contacts) who is at least a
member of this list
- Commitment to publicise in the local area (could take some effort and
can't assume people will just turn up and/or regular members will travel longer distances)
- Liaise via the list to avoid clashes and to aim to keep events
regularly spaced (probably not an issue right now!)
I can't think of anything else.
I'd like to thank everyone who spoke and hosted workshops at OSHCamp this year. In particular Alan, Omer and Aaron, who not only put a lot of effort into preparing their workshops, but also very generously sponsored the materials. A special thanks also to Kevin Murrell for being a most excellent compere.
Already started thinking about OSHCamp 2024 and will likely aim for the August bank holiday weekend again, which would make it Sat 24th & Sun 25th. We seem to get the best turn out when hosted in late August, though appreciate that it also doesn't work for some due to holidays. However, it does also have the benefit that if people wish, they can perhaps more easily take off a few days and turn it into a mini holiday — plus we are more likely to get better weather than going into September.
Best,
Andrew
PS. We had some nice feedback from Drink, where we hosted the social on the Saturday evening: they said we were a lovely bunch and were welcome back any time. On 06/09/2023 17:31, Ken Boak via oshug wrote:
Andy, and All,
Certainly an enjoyable time in Hebden Bridge after a gap of nearly 4 years.
Well Done Andrew and his team for creating such a memorable event. The attendance exceeded all expectations, proving that such an event was way overdue, and we all descended on HB to get our annual fix!
I would like to see some specialist events hosted at TNMoC or some of the other excellent Computing History museums, for example Cambridge or Manchester.
Liverpool, West Midlands and other regional cities are doing very interesting things in the OSH field.
Perhaps the idea of regional centres of excellence, might be one way to spread the coverage, and have greater accessibility for those that do not necessarily have the means to travel to London once a month.
These venues are generally reachable by train or car, for perhaps a long day visit, and a specialist tour and possibly demonstrations of the exhibits.
This would be very informative to learn how vintage construction techniques and use of wartime GPO and RADAR equipment led to the beginnings of the British Computer Industry.
For those that cannot attend in person, properly recorded Zoom presentations would at least give a flavour of the meet-ups.
Just my tuppence worth!
Ken
On Wed, 6 Sept 2023 at 09:12, Andy Bennett via oshug oshug@oshug.org wrote:
Hi all,
It was great to see so many of you a week or so ago at Wuthering Bytes and OSHCamp in Hebden Bridge. It was a sell-out and there were definitely more chairs in the hall compared to 2019. All the thanks and credit must go to Andrew Back who organised another wonderful weekend with a great lineup of speakers and workshoppes.
Several of you approached me over that weekend or have been in touch since to say that you really enjoyed the sense of community and to ask about the old meetups in London. It was clear that many people were out of contact with OSHUG and that communications have been sparse. This is my fault so I apologise.
Some of you will know that we used to co-organize meetups once a month in London with the BCS Open Source Specialist Group. The turnout was generally good and when lockdown happened in early March 2020 the meetings went online. For the first year things were well attended, seeing audience numbers more than double from the in-person meetups with attendees all over the country and speakers from Europe and occasionally the US or other places in the world. However, very few of these were advertised to the OSHUG membership base because announcements only went out when there was a very strong hardware focus. Moreover, although the attendance was incredibly high, the sense of community, especially the serendipitous interaction and networking, was completely absent.
Over the recent weekend, and since, people have spoken and it seems that there might be a renewed opportunity to do something about this. If you were one of those people, or have the same sentiments, I'd like to invite you to reply to this message on the mailing list so that we can get the discussion out into the open.
I'm in London so can help organise something here, including finding a venue, perhaps again at the BCS or maybe somewhere else. If anyone anywhere else in the country would like to do something similar then please also speak up.
It was great to see so many people in Hebden Bridge and hopefully see a few of you again soon!
Please reply to this message with your thoughts about a renewed set of meetups as well as where in the country you'd like to see them.
-- andyjpb@ashurst.eu.org http://www.ashurst.eu.org/ http://www.gonumber.com/andyjpb 0x7EBA75FF _______________________________________________ oshug mailing list -- oshug@oshug.org To unsubscribe send an email to oshug-leave@oshug.org
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