Getting Together with Colleagues
The weekend started on the Friday as Keith travelled up from Kent to stay with us over the course of the weekend as our base for the conference. It is not often we get to “physically” see each other with this remote working and therefore I was looking forward to the visit.
After collecting Keith from the station, we headed back to ours for some food and then spent much of the afternoon working in the same room – which was quite novel!
Mid afternoon we headed out for a run. I have been a keen runner since the start of the year and Keith is a keen cyclist and runner. We did my usual loop around the local area and was faster than we thought. Strangely our devices recorded different distances. On inspection in appeared to Keith’s Garmin device that had cut some corners.
Speakers and Sponsors Friday Social
On Friday evening we have a pre-event social in Manchester for the sponsors and speakers. As Highrise Digital we were sponsors and I was a speaker so we both attended the event.
The venue was superb and again, as with London had table tennis tables so I spent much of the evening on these playing with other attendees. I really enjoyed it and it reminds me of playing Table Tennis whilst on holiday when I was young.
A train journey home from Manchester city centre on Friday night landed us back in Leyland at around 23:30. We headed to bed for what would be a very busy day the next day.
WordCamp Manchester Conference Day
It was rise and shine at 06:00 in order to get the train on Saturday morning to Manchester Victoria ready for the conference. The weather was shocking and it felt like it was never going to get light. Up north we call this weather, of moisture in the air “mizzle”.
The conference day is setup with two tracks of talks on different subjects. These are mainly divided into general WordPress talks as well as more technical talks. My talk was a more technical talk and therefore I was in track 2 at 11:45. It went very well however I was informed afterwards that I had spelt my name wrong on the first slide!
The day was great, with lots of good networking taking place as well. My favourite talk was Hannah Smith on Project Management. Project management is something we have need assistance with at Highrise Digital for a while and therefore the insight Hannah was able to give us was very valuable.
WordCamp Saturday Social
The social which takes place immediately after the conference is a great chance to meet in a non-work environment. Often the main point of conversation is WordPress, although in a much more informal setting. I had some great chats with old WordPress friends and met some new people too.
Again after a late train back from the city centre we arrived back in Leyland, extremely tired at about 23:30. The good news was that the clocks went back in the night and we would all get an extra hour in bed.
In your are at all interested or intrigued, the slides for my talk can be found here:
