Tag Archives: bristol

Ignite Bristol 2 #ignbrzl

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Last night was the second Ignite Bristol - this one taking place at the Tobacco Factory Theatre rather than the Polish Club where I spoke at the first event. This did rather represent a general step up for the entire event – it was MUCH bigger this time with a crowd of over 200 people and the entire event felt much more established (amazing given it is only the second event..)

To some extent I felt obliged to attend as I figured if people sat through my babbling last time I should offer the same courtesy and as anyone who knows me will confirm it is rare that I travel south of the river so it was a bit of a big deal for me :)

The event was a spectacular success – I was initially a bit worried that some of the talks might be a little ‘pitchy’ but as it turned out there were only a couple I was a bit twitchy about and one of them was entertaining as hell.

Martin Poulter got things off to a great start with an interesting and perfectly timed talk and after that my particular highlights were Kaz Pasiecznik talking about cryptic crosswords, Paul Parry doing his ‘Literally Tsar’ schtick and Claire Scantlebury with her talk about branding tricks (even if she is an Apple-hater!)

That is not to say everyone else wasn’t great – these were just the real stand outs for me on the evening.

Particularly credit must go to the two chaps who did the Ignite Karaoke – so brave and very, very impressive (and got me off the hook from doing it as well!)

It was another brilliant opportunity to catch up with many friends and meet up with new people or meet people in real-life rather than Twitter for a change. I found the whole event a real pleasure to attend and can’t wait til the next one (where I will volunteer to speak again if selected..)

Thanks to all the organisers and the brilliant speakers.

Bristwestival

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twestival-logo2I briefly mentioned Bristwestival in an earlier post but I think its a big enough to justify a whole post of its own!

I have purchased my ticket (along with about 25 others at this point) and was especially pleased to see the venue is the Lanes, a new bowling alley/diner/night club hybrid in the town centre.

John has written a good overview of the event over on his blog so I’ll try not to cover the same ground but I think it will be a fun night for a worthwhile cause (charity:water) so I would encourage any Twitteratti in the Bristol/Bath area to cough up a fiver and come along – I have even purchased a top notch retro bowling shirt for the occasion :)   The event starts early and finishes late so there is plenty of time to make a guest appearance!

Lots of local individuals and businesses have generously offered time. sponsorship and prizes to the event and I think they deserve our support.

The wider Twestival movement got some decent coverage in a post on Techcrunch which was nice to see..

PublicTransportCamp

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One of the many blogs I try to follow via my overloaded Google Reader is HorsePigCow by Tara Hunt.  Now I follow this blogs for a few reasons – Tara has been a leading light in the rise of BarCamp, did alot of work encouraging the concept of ‘co-working‘ (something which I am about to start at the Hub) and she is a big proponent of something she calls Pinko Marketing (and while I don’t agree with all of that it is much closer to my ideas than anything else I have come across).  In fact I imagine that posts inspired by all these topics will pop up over the next few months.  However the activity that has inspired me to write this post is the idea of TransitCamp.

Anyone who has spent more than a couple of days minus a car in Bristol will know that the public transport system is a shambles (and an expensive one at that!) and despite some high profile, big capital programmes by the Council no real progress has been made.

TransitCamps aim to put together transport officials, geeks and anyone else interested in a BarCamp style environment to try and identify achievable, mainly technical, solutions to improve the customer experience.

It seems to me that a city that is home to Sustrans, a growing community of protesters around public transport provision as well as HP Labs, ILRT at University of Bristol, UWE, iShed and a large community of talented geeks (just look at SkillSwap and the Bristol BarCamp) might be a good place to give this a go in the UK.

The success of things like MySociety in the UK demonstrates just how much can be achieved by a small group of passionate volunteers and by circumventing official channels(!) which is certainly something that would be needed in Bristol.

I think there could be some real opportunities here to just make life a little easier for those of us who use public transport regularly but also for those occasional users and visitors to whom it must just be mystifying!

The short stagger to freedom..

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OK as I sit here writing this its about 1.30pm on Sunday 9th of March – in a few hours time the mighty Bristol Rovers will have hopefully booked a historic slot in the FA cup semi-finals at Wembley and I will be getting carried away celebrating!

That said my main concern right at this moment is my impending move from a pretty safe and secure career working for JISC and or HEFCE with a nice, bullet proof Bristol Uni contract to the unknown (for me) world of freelance.  My last day as a Bristol Uni employee is April 4th so time is ticking and nerves are fraying.  Its a strange feeling it has to be said – I am sure its the right thing to do but its still scary.  I have been been pretty lucky the last 4 or so years when I was at JISC and worked with a great team and by and large got to do the sort of projects I wanted to – however my role attracted alot of responsibilities over time and while I understood the need for them and was compensated pretty well for them my time doing the stuff I really enjoyed became less and less and frustrations started to creep in.  So in a move motivated almost entirely by this frustration (and a little greed!) I took a secondment to HEFCE to help them with their commitment to Directgov, the governments uber-portal.  This was a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig mistake!  While the team at HEFCE have turned out to be a good bunch and I have met some interesting people the level of frustrations around this project reached critical mass really quickly.  It was bad enough to convince me that I was better off making a move and trying to be my own boss for a while – so here I am – 1 month to go and in panic mode!

Thankfully things are starting to come together a bit – I am hoping to be based at the Hub in King Street, Bristol – a co-working venue thats been highly recommended (I am not the kind of person who can work at home all the time), I have a couple a projects booked in – enough not to have to worry about the mortgage to start with anyway, I’ve got this blog running as an online home and I have got all the forms ready to register as self-employed and all that comes with it.

The one big flaw in this master plan is pretty problematic..I have no idea of how to pitch for work – and if I am honest and a little uncomfortable doing it (when I do clumsily try!)  Long term I feel this might cause me a bit of trouble!  Thankfully I am not in this to get rich – just to stay interested.  My goal is to take projects that I believe in or am interested in and only take on enough work to retain my financial status quo.

Anyway one thing I do hope to do is become much more a part of the Bristol/Bath web community – there are some very talented people working in the West and while I know a few of them I realise I should make much more of an effort to attend things like SkillSwap and any other meet-ups that I find out about – its important to keep learning – especially when the very thing you are bringing to the table is knowledge and not alot else.

OK thats enough for now – will hopefully write something interesting soon – I will hopefully blog about the work I’ll be doing around the JISC and HEFCE conferences online in the near future as well as something else I have been working on for one of the projects I’ll be taking forward.