Just got back from the second Sheffield OpenCoffee. This month we were hidden in the back of Starbucks in Tudor Square which was reserved for us all. Turn out was significantly down for the first hour of so, just Matt and myself from PlusNet, Marco Potesta and Lee Strafford (both ex-PlusNet) and Mark Wheeler (i think?) from Metrona. We have some good conversations about why we had such a small turn out (agreed as being down to a lack of actually proper promotion beyond 'posting and hoping'), how to handle remote development groups based on Matt's experience in India over these past few weeks and a community approach to net start ups, something Lee and Marco are looking at right now.
Things started to fill up a little after twelve with Sridhar Gowda from Country Bookstore, Andy from Meecard who won the £1000 best demo prize at BarCampSheffield, Gang Lu and Stuart Grimshaw and Craig Andrews who paid a flying-lunch break-visit.
People did get talking once it filled up a bit, but I think we need to take a bit of action to make this flourish in the way OpenCoffee Leeds is beginning to. We need some better promotion of the event and definitely a better venue (i.e. one with WiFi access that works!). The 10am start last month seemed better than 11am today as it should miss the lunch rush.
