The Future of Manchester Web Meetup
Since its inaugural event at AO’s Salford office in June 2018, Manchester Web Meetup has gone from strength to strength; thanks to the support of the Mancunian tech scene, including the attendees who have regularly participated in our events, and the companies who have hosted and sponsored us, Manc Web has certainly cemented itself as one of the prevalent tech communities in the city. As well as providing a platform for local speakers and software engineering teams, we’ve been fortunate enough to host talks from the likes of Google, Amazon Web Services, and BBC. Founding this meetup and witnessing its exponential growth has been an utter privilege.
With the final meet of 2020 wrapped up, I’m hereby announcing that I’m stepping down as the group’s sole organiser. To be entirely transparent, I no longer feel invested in organising events; I don’t say that lightly, given that the positive impact of this community, especially on junior developers, has been an incredible reward. Unfortunately, said reward does not necessarily outweigh the stress of securing speakers, coordinating with sponsors and hosts, and other organisational duties that render the whole process cumbersome at the best of times. Combined with my ongoing side projects (one of which I used to write this post…) and the fact that, post-pandemic, I’ll be spending most of my time in Lancashire, I feel that this is a natural exit point.
What happens next?
I would seriously regret the group ending with my departure, especially after building it from zilch over the last two and a half years. I’m thus pleased to inform you all that Manc Web will continue without me, managed by these incredibly capable people:
Sean O’Mahoney (@Sean12697) — Co-Founder, INEVITABLE
Oliver Sewell (@LifeAGlitch) — Frontend Developer, Elementary Digital
Jai Patel (@jai_wt) — Data Analyst, Beever and Struthers
Having multiple organisers is certainly more fair than the work falling on one person, but we would nonetheless like to expand our fault tolerance (sorry!) as much as possible. If you’re interested in joining the Manc Web team, please reach out to me (@jamesseanwright) or Sean (@Sean12697) on Twitter.
Thanks to every single one of you who has helped make Manc Web so special; I couldn’t have done it without any of you. See you as an attendee in 2021.
P.S. My top 5 favourite memories have to be:
- Jason Yu live coding a virtual DOM from scratch at our fourth meetup; I’ve never seen anyone so energetic and composed in the face of implementing a challenging API in front of a live audience. It’s also our most viewed talk on YouTube with almost 15,000 views at the time of writing
- Angela Yu and Alex Muramoto of the Google Maps team giving a couple of talks on their product; it was so exciting to have a touch of Silicon Valley here in the North West
- Our first birthday bash at Push Doctor, which attracted our highest turnout of over 100 attendees
- The two meetups we ran with LADbible, who have been particularly supportive of Manc Web and to whom I’ll always be grateful
- Our first event at AO. The AV setup wasn’t the best (at the time!), but it’s humbling to look back on that evening and see how far we’ve come
