After such a positive response to the “Outdoors Bloggers Blog Camp” post the other week, I’ve been giving the idea some more thought.
Timing wise to hold it I thought maybe the best time would be the half term in October.
Next up is location. That’s the hard one. The location needs to be central, have wifi (with a decent connection speed), rooms for presentations, etc. So ideally possibly a hostel of some kind.
Which brings me on to cost, the whole thing needs to be as low cost as possible, if not free. So if it is to be a hostel then would folks be prepared to pay for that?
Also how likely would we be to get sponsorship from an outdoor company for the event? Which would most definitely help in keeping the costs down.
Then there is the practical stuff like hiring projectors etc to be used in talks/presentations.
Attendees would have to bring their own laptops naturally, hence the wifi.
I’ll also use eventbrite when details become more fixed to handle keeping track of who is coming and allocate places and collect any money that is required.
So they are my thoughts so far. Would appreciate any feedback and suggestions.
I’m reasonably new to the whole blogging scene, but I’ll definitely be interested in this.
In terms of using a hostel… I wouldn’t have any issue with that, and there’s plenty of decent sized Hostels about. The challenge would be finding one with or near both conference facilities and the outdoors (as I’m assuming an outing, even a short day trip, would be on the cards). Also, most hostels charge extra for the Wi-Fi, which can be a bit of a negative, I guess.
As you say, the location itself would have to be reasonably central for most people, so I suspect somewhere in Northern England… and when that thought comes in, the Lake District suddenly becomes an obvious choice.
I know you can only do these thing out of term-time but as with all things related to school holidays, I’m guess the prices are going to be higher than at other times.
I also find the concept of ‘central’ to be a strange beast, if 20 people are coming from say south of Birmingham and 5 are coming from north of Leeds; having the venue in the Lakes isn’t really central, IMO.
Luckily, most hostels don’t work like that and charge a flat fee (at least that’s true of the SYHA ones), so it’s no more expensive during holidays than it is at term-time.
Agreed re the definition of central, but judging from a purely outdoors blogger demographic, it’s a safe wager that there will be some (myself included) coming from north of the border. The location is always going to be the challenging part of organising something like this. It’s never going to be possible to please everyone, either, sadly.
Hi Darren,
All sounds good so far. As I’m Scotland based I can’t really help with location issues. October week sounds like a good idea though.
Probably won’t know until closer to the time and confirmed but I’d really like to attend. Wouldn’t mind contributing financially either and if I could help with anything else I will.
Great idea, Davy
I think I could do something in October, could work out some logistics to lighten the fuel burden too. Naturally would need to run the date past Mrs M as am holidaying in October, might even be stopping in Lakeland
I think it has to be in one of our wilder areas – wouldn’t seem right in urbania! Lakeland, Northumbs, Dales – maybe even southern uplands….for a change.
Costwise, yes free would be great, but a small charge wouldn’t be repulsive.
This sounds like a great idea – I’ve been off the scene so to speak for a while and it would be cool to meet others doing similar things depending on the dates and location (I used to blog on Walk Eryri and recently started up with a more general site that’s more UK based).
I may be able to help out with projectors and so on, but it all depends on location as I’ll be using public transport to get wherever it is.
I hear that Snowdonia’s nice in late October
Dave, great hearing from you.
That would be great if you could help with the projectors.
If you know of any places in Snowdonia that meet the requirements let me know.
I will… I know of a few, but trying to find one that meets the wi-fi requirement might be an issue as I’ve just checked on a few and they unfortunately don’t provide it …
Hi
If you looking for a cheap hostel. Look at doing something out of season.
You can get hostels at£20 full board per night at the yha.
You can hire the likes of wasterwater for £150 a night
Illam hall you may get a good price and the lounge room is big.#
Wifi could be coming to the hostel and maybe free. As other private hostel are doing it now.
Borrowdale as a big room
look at the new castleton hostel
manchester yha (not near the hills)