Project Mint – the project to write a bid to bring WordCamp Europe to Manchester, UK.
At the 2018 WordCamp Manchester social, there had been umms and arrs about applying for WordCamp Europe to come to WordPress co-founder’s – Mike Little‘s home town.
I had personally applied before but it went to Seville that year. Many people didn’t realise I had applied previously. We knew Brexit was a possibility. We did the maths and estimated when we suspected for things to really take affect if it really happened.
Then Steph Walker looked me in the eye and said “If you lead, I’ll join the organising team.”
Others joined Steph’s comment and by the end of the evening I had caved and declared I was going to apply to bring WordCamp Europe to Manchester and invited anyone who wanted to join in the fun to join me.
Unfortunately, we never did win the WordCamp Europe 2020 bid. Our friends in Porto won it. It was a moment of sadness and relief. We all had high hopes but we also knew that we had gained a lot of time back.
Some of the bidders discussed what we wanted to do about the application. We had poured a lot of time looking up local history and information. We didn’t want it to all go to waste, or get lost.
We hope that it will inspire you to visit one of the home towns of WordPress.
More importantly – if you are thinking about applying to host WordCamp Europe in Manchester, we hope by sharing it, it will help you with your application.
We wish you luck future bidders! 🙌
Props to the Co-bidders
Thank you to the following people who all were co-bidders with me.
Some of you went searching and reading up on history of the city, we all love so much. Some of you did research into costs and practicalities of staying and running an event like WordCamp Europe in Manchester.
One thing you all did was keep me calm and had my back when my machine was having kernel panics every 3 minutes. I couldn’t have done this without you all.
I hope we get to do something in the future. 🤗
The co-bidders in first name order:
Thank you!
Feature image photo by Fraser Cottrell on Unsplash