umBristol hiatus

At our recent umBristol meetup earlier this month, I announced that there wouldn't be another meet-up until after the summer, as I'll be away on extended holiday; plus, there's CodeCabin in early September. I proposed to the group that if they wanted to organise an umBristol whilst I was away, then I can give them organiser access rights on the Meetup.com group.

Now, between you and me, I'm hoping that someone steps up to the mark on this. Along with Dan Bramall, we've been running umBristol for the past 6 years, with over 50 meetups organised, - okay, every other month is a pub social, but still there's been a certain pressure and demand on us.

For me, the hardest part about organising an Umbraco user-group has been trying to find people to present on a specific topic. Typically, most umBristol folk are .NET developers, so in-depth technical talks aren't too much of an issue. Yet with more abstract CMS topics, such as content modelling or editorial workflow, I felt that we've been somewhat lacking.

Truth be told, over the past few years I've become tired with the "lecture" format. It's increasingly difficult for me to sit still and listen for a set period of time. I find it much more engaging to have a starting topic, and let others get involved with a discussion. I enjoy learning from a collective experience.

All things have a life cycle, I guess I've reached that time to take a break and let someone else take the umBristol reins for a while.

With all that said, I've met a lot of great people at the meet-ups, many who are now close friends. I'd like to say a huge #h5yr to all the companies that have hosted our meetups and much love to the umBristol massive, long may it continue!