Blah. Feeling fed up. Last night I lost the battle to host Drupalcon in Cambridge. It’s a huge pity – it would have meant circa 2,000 visitors for a week in September 2011. The key problems were for those participating in the discussion were:
- We don’t have a venue capable of housing 2,000 visitors. The best we have is the Corn Exchange, which seats 1,462. People were opposed to the idea of having split plenary sessions.
- We don’t have a venue with everything under one roof: delegates would have to have walked between venues in the city centre. Some participants saw this as a major stumbling block – perhaps failing to understand that the city centre is pedestrianised.
Apparently we need a proper conference centre in Cambridge.
All in all, a huge pity: it could have brought some helpful change to city centre traders, with at the very minimum £1/2m being spent on the event.
Oh well.
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That’s a shame. I lived in Cambridge for 6 years and thought that this ancient tiny city would make an awesome Drupalcon venue. Walking around Cambridge is a huge joy. Maybe 2012?
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It’s a great shame Jeff – sorry there wasn’t any more we could do for you at Conference Cambridge. We don’t get many enquiries for very large events and it is true that our facilities in the University and Colleges are better suited for events up to 500.
However, the multisite option has worked really well for many other large meetings and Cambridge is a really compact city to get about in -distances shorter than adjacent rooms in may convention centres; with good signage and organisation it works well as a destination.
Please do consider us again if you have anything smaller!
I will pass your comment to my peers.
Kelly Vickers
Conference Cambridge -
Lisa: probably 2010 (maybe 2011) was the last year Cambridge is viable; Drupalcon has been roughly doubling in size every year. If that pattern continues, 2012 is likely to bring around 3,000 to 4,000 delegates. Perhaps more. That’s probably outside the bounds of what Cambridge could handle.
I was rather hoping that nobody would bid for 2010, and then would have seen if we could have put something together. But Copenhagen has bid for 2010 (and 2011) and Berlin may yet. Copenhagen has several venues that can seat more than the expected 2010 numbers. Added to that – there is low community support from DrupalUK for 2010, and to make a successful event we ideally need lots of volunteer time.
Kelly: I’m immensely disappointed. I thought Cambridge had wider community support, but when it came to voting, most people put their weight behind London citing those two reasons. If I’d realised that people thought that they were serious stumbling blocks before the voting, I wouldn’t have gone about the campaign for Cambridge in the same way.
Jeff
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