Photo by Francescerous
Today I was at the Aquila offices on Birmingham’s Broad Street to chat with Julia about this and that. During my visit we we joined by Caroline Ashton (no relation I’m aware of) from the Broad Street Business Improvement District which brings together the businesses in the area to work together to pool resources for mutual benefit. Which means she knows all the businesses in the area, what they do, what they need, what they have to offer, etc.
Broad Street has a lot of venues (it’s the “convention, entertainment and nightlife quarter” according to Wikipedia) most of which are only really used in the evenings, which means there’s all this space just sitting there off peak. I was reminded of the Austin BarCamp which took place during SXSWi in a nightclub repurposed into a conference (Here’s the video I shot). And also Refresh Austin which has speakers on web development topics every month in the gig venue of a bar on Tuesdays when they have no gigs. And closer to home WXWM took place in the upstairs room of a cafe while MozCamp will be in the function room of a Moseley bar.
The point is that when putting on events like this you don’t need a purpose-built venue. Generally speaking the community can provide the equipment needed (PA, projector, wifi routers) – all you need is space with potential, some furniture and an Internet connection.
And the lesson I learned today is if you’re wanting to do an off-peak conference-style in the city centre you don’t necessarily have to hire a conference-style space at commercial rates. If the venue can cover their costs and even get something in kind from the experience, and if you minimise the amount of work they need to do to accommodate you, it’s possible to have a decent sized thing happening within 10 minutes of New Street Station.
It looks like I’ll be doing some work with Caroline and Aquila soon so will be looking to get a better grasp on exactly what’s available in the district. Will keep you posted.
A wiki or something to collate the different spaces that people have come across would be a really useful resource.
I’m doing a lot of legwork at the moment trying to find suitable venues for BARG and for Birmingham Hack Space. I expect there’s a lot of overlap with the Blogmeets in terms of the sort of facilities we’re looking for too:
Suitable for evening and/or weekend use
Space for 20-or-so people without annoying the regular clientèle
Refreshments
WiFi, or at least a single cabled connection for presentations/videocalls
Reasonably central location/easy access
Off-peak and/or larger stuff is potentially on the cards too, so I’m keen to see how this conversation develops…