Last month I mentioned the first PHPNW User Group meeting and this month I’m delighted to tell you about the 1st annual PHPNW conference happening later this year.

phpnw08 is a 1 day event organised by developers for developers to be held on Saturday 22nd November 2008 at Manchester Central and will bring together the North-of-England PHP community for a one-day event of exceptional presentations, challenging workshops, sensational debates and networking events. The conference will have a mix of in-depth and shorter talks and the call for papers is open so go submit a proposal.

Superfunk Roller Disco returns to Preston

After the success of our Superfunk Roller Disco Preston launch party at 53 Degrees in May earlier this year, we’re back in Preston on Saturday 27th September 2008 for another round of bump action disco fun.

For full details head on over to the Superfunk Roller Disco Preston website.

Gay City Rollers’ is back and it’ll be bigger and better than ever before!

Make sure you get your skates on for this ‘Over the Rainbow’ Pride Special. It’s new home will be ‘Pure’ nightclub in the Printworks on Wednesday 20th August, 9pm until 2am and it’s an opportunity to have an alternative night, try something new, party the night away at the bar and make new friends while raising funds for the Lesbian and Gay Foundation - the North West’s leading community based charity, working to end homophobia and empower people. Get your skates on!

On Friday night the University of Salford is being invaded by Girl Geeks. Manchester Geek Girl Dinners hosts it’s second event and this time Kerry and I will be going along to join in the fun.

Event details

When: 7:00 PM Friday, July 25, 2008

Where: University of Salford, University House, University of Salford,
Salford, England M5 4WT

Cost: Around £15 (includes 3 course meal, coffee and drinks)

What: For those who haven’t been before, it’s dinner, wine, talks from inspirational women, networking and discussions afterwards.

Currently two talks planned, if you want to get involved and speak about women in engineering, science and technology, please do get in touch.

Who can attend: Girl Geeks! A lady who has an interest, or is involved in the Science, Engineering and Technology industries. Blokes can come too, but you need an invite from a Geek Girl!

The all important links: Manchester Girl Geek Dinner Event Website, Upcoming.org Event Page and there’s a facebook Event Page

This weekend Manchester’s Castlefield Arena will be host to the Nokia Skate Almighty music tour that’s already been a huge hit in London and Birmingham. The rolling begins this Friday 25th and ends Sunday 27th July. There’s a bunch of us from SilverWheels Skate Rink in Altrincham heading over to the Sunday evening sessions (more specifically 2000-2200). I’ll be taking the camera along to get some photographic evidence so keep your eye out for that.

There is a new PHP User Group in town PHP North West (PHPNW), some of you may remember the the old PHP Meetup in Manchester run by Dan Morris which later merged into GeekUp due to low interest. Since then there has been growth of User Groups that are more focused on a particular technology.

What is PHPNW?

PHPNW is a community of web developers, web designers and anyone else interested in PHP, from the North West.

First Meeting

The first PHPNW meeting is on this Thursday 17th July in Manchester, for full details visit the event page at Upcoming.

PHPNW links

• PHPNW Website
• PHPNW Google Group
• PHPNW on twitter
• PHPNW on Upcoming
• PHPNW on LinkedIn
• PHPNW on Facebook
• IRC: #phpnw (irc.freenode.net)

This Wednesday 4th June 2008 is going be the last Roller Disco Manchester until mid September - so get your neons on and your legs out and roll on down to Pure this Wednesday for a night to remember!

Work in or near Manchester City Centre, will you be hungry on Thursday lunch? Then come join me for the first GeekUp Lunch this Thursday 1PM at Taurus, 1 Canal Street, Manchester M1 3HE

Full details on the GeekUp Lunch Manchester event page.

Myself and a few other North West Digital Communities (NWDC) members have been invited to the Big Chip Awards in Manchester by Manchester Digital Development Agency (MDDA). It’s like the oscars but for the Digital Media and IT Industry outside of London and is certainly the place to be seen. It should be a good night, Code Computerlove have 3 projects shortlisted in the same category so there’s a possibility of a win.

This will be my second awards event after last years FRESH:digital Awards 2007 which I really enjoyed and not just because I won Freshest Digital Young Professional, but because it’s good to see some of the fantastic work that’s produced and see the people involved rewarded for their hard work.

A big hug goes out to the MDDA for invite. I’m looking forward to meeting some new faces and putting faces to people I’ve spoken to via mailing lists like GeekUp but have yet to meet. If your attending and we’ve not met do say hello.

Last month saw the launch of GeekUp Preston which takes place on the third Monday of every month. The first event at Gemma’s flat turned out to be extremely popular so this month it will be at a bigger and public venue. Gemma has also promised to bake some Chocolate Guinness Cake so make sure you get there early to be in with a chance of sampling the goodness!

For those not in the know; “GeekUp is a community of web designers, web developers, and other tech-minded folk from the North West. Our socials take place once a month in Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Preston and Sheffield they are always a lively place to share ideas and spread a little knowledge.”

John Kirkham’s Skate Fever Roller Disco’s are kicking off on the 5th July with the first one being held at Xsite at the Xscape Castleford in Leeds West Yorkshire.

I’m so excited have been for weeks and John’s kindly asked Rachael to DJ so no doubt the music will be fly.

It’s the last Thursday of the month and that means GeekUp Liverpool is happening so if your around the Mersey you should pop along for a geeky chat. I unfortunately can’t make this event due to workload but hopefully I’ll make the next Liverpool event.

Event Details

When

6:00 PM Thursday June 28th, 2007

Where

3345 Parr Street, Liverpool, L1 4JN

Description

This Month’s Talk - Unobtrusive JavaScript with Dave Verwer

With every site you visit piling on more and more JavaScript and Ajax, what happens when a user comes along using a screen reader or mobile device that would choke on even a simple alert()? How can we take advantage of the power of these technologies without providing any barriers to users, this session will cover techniques to ensure that you can still serve up rich content without excluding users, all from one code base.

Upcoming

Let us know if your attending on the upcoming.org event page.

Calling Leeds, Yorkshire based Designers/Developers/Geeks!

I’m really happy to announce that GeekUp has arrived in yet another city, this time Leeds. I’m grateful that Deb Basset has agreed to organise the Leeds events. Debs and her partner Rob have been attending the Manchester events non-stop since I met them at reboot last year. They drive a 3 hour round trip to Manchester how much more dedicated could a GeekUper be?

The inaugural GeekUp Leeds

When

6:00 PM Wednesday June 20th, 2007

Where

The Cross Keys 107 Water Lane, Leeds LS11 5WD

Description

The inaugural Leeds event!

Upcoming

Let us know if your attending on the upcoming.org event page.

I’ve uploaded some more photos from last nights Roller Disco at Billie Rox in Manchester to my Roller Disco Billie Rox Manchester set on flickr. Myself John, Dan, Debs and Rob went over after GeekUp. There are not as many shots as usual I was having too much fun skating so didn’t get out the camera much, but there are a few - enjoy.

I’ve been to the Roller Disco in Manchester at Billie Rox a few times this month and have taken lots of photos, some of which you can view in my Roller Disco Billie Rox Manchester set on flickr.

Today I found out from Kerry’s dad about a temporary ice rink in Southport similar to the one in Manchester. The ice rink is located in Southport Town Hall Gardens and upsettingly like the Manchester ice rink closes this Sunday 7th January 2007. I will lucky get to go skating on the rink this weekend, we were originally taking Shannon to ice skating at Blackburn Ice Area but Southport is a little closer and won’t be much longer.

The 400 metre ice rink lets you skate around the giant Christmas Tree in the Town Hall gardens and opens at 11am till 8pm, sessions last one our and cost from £4.00 for children and from £5.00 for Adults its slightly cheaper than Manchester’s ice rink but that’s because its Southport.

In the wee hours this morning while doing some R&D for a new project I started a few days back, I found out about a Roller Disco that happens in Manchester at Billie Rox on Portland Street every Tuesday and Thursday night! Since a collegue at code computerlove told me she had seen a poster around town about a Roller Disco, since then I’ve been trying to find out about it. I’m going to be attending the next event on Tuesday 2nd January and I’m really excited!

Me and Rachael have previously travelled down to London for the Roller Disco in Kings Cross and the London skates from Hyde Park, its great to see the North getting more attention. I hope this is the start of much greater things to come in the Northern Skate Scene.

Manchester City Centre will host a temporary ice rink as part of this years festive programme. The rink will be located in Piccadilly Gardens and will be open for public skating from 17th November till 7th January. The 750m2 real ice rink is to be constructed near in the fountain area of the gardens. The rink labelled On Ice At Piccadilly joins the Manchester Christmas Markets, and the Wheel of Manchester to make up Manchester festive program along with many lighting displays around the city.

At £7.50 for one hours skating I thought that was a little pricey but after looking at Hampton Court Ice Rink and Tower of London Ice Rink we get off lightly. Full details including opening times and prices can be found on the On Ice At Piccadilly event page.

I’m going to try and get a bunch of people from the office together and see if they fancy an outing one evening, and it sounds like it could be a fun night out for the folks from GeekUp we’ve been looking for things to do for the Christmas meet, which will most likely involve a meal and then followed by lots of alcohol and maybe a skate?

I’ve just got back from the first official Pecha Kucha Night in Manchester, which I attended with Dave Verwer. We’ve held Pecha Kucha style presentations quite a few times at GeekUp but I hadn’t until this evening been to any official Pecha Kucha events since I first experienced it during my trip to Copenhagen for reboot8 earlier this year. The minute I found out about the Manchester Pecha Kucha Night I promptly ordered my ticket. The ticket cost me £15 as a non D&AD member or student, I feel the event was slightly overpriced but I’m glad I attended and would like to thank Max Fraser from Pecha Kucha Nights UK and the D&AD for bringing Pecha Kucha to Manchester.

The event took place in Screen 18 at Odeon Cinema in The Print Works, which had a very impressive turn out of about 350 attendees. The speakers in order of appearance, Tim Parsons, Nick Bell, Brendan Dawes, Jai Redman, Nick Johnson, David Fisher, Liz Birkbeck, Emma Booty, Jo and Christoph Shaw, Klaas Diersmann and Sakurako Haino. I’m not going to review each speaker but I was disappointed with the talks by Liz Birkbeck’s which was just a plug for her company Bubble, and the talk by Klaas Diersmann and Sakurako Haino who had not prepared and stood for 6 minutes just giggling to themselves and saying “um yeah”. On a positive note I was impressed with the work by Urban Splash and the talk by Jo Shaw, Christoph Shaw and Kevin Boniface which had me and the rest of the audience in hysterics from both the content and the fact that Kevin wasn’t able to speak properly because of a cough.

After the event myself and Dave grabbed a coffee in a nearby bar and chatted about various things including the projects we’ve both got on the go along with new ventures. One new projects is to contact and convince Kevin Boniface to create a podcast because his work was really great, I’ll keep you posted on how it turns out but you can listen to some of his work over on his myspace page.

I’ve uploaded some photos to my flickr account should you want to have a look, I warn the quality is pretty shocking.

No not my wedding, but GeekUp’s first full day conference and in just a few hours I’ll be the host.

I’m really excited! It’s been a crazy few weeks during the run up trying to get everything organised so I’m hoping it all runs smoothly otherwise we’ll have 40 upset punters.