by Dan Slee

Ladies and gentlemen, cut yourself an extra piece of cake and try to be brave… there will be no commscamp in 2019.

There will be no cake stall by the canal, no fresh ideas will be crafted in Digbeth and no new friendships will be struck in the sunshine eating an ice cream.

Stop the clocks.

Muffle the bells.

We’ve decided to take a fallow year for the Birmingham event after six straight years to let the cake bakers recover.

But wipe those tears away….

But the good news to help you wipe away your tears and blow your nose is that planning is already taking place for commscamp in 2020 and we’ll be back refreshed at the Bond Company on 15.7.20.

And we’re also making an announcement imminently about #commscampnorth our touring event for those in t’north for people as call their tea a brew and who y’know, speak to each other on buses.

Why a fallow year?

Someone once said that commscamp appears effortless but the truth is it takes some planning. My colleague and good friend Emma Rodgers was always going to take a 12-month sabbatical this year and be back in 2020. I was ill earlier this year and my time allocated for planning was lost. Rather than chuck something together it made sense to take a year off.

I’ve held off announcing this just to see if anyone would notice and the touching truth is they have. There’s been a number of messages which has prompted plans for 2020.

The place for commscamp…

Is there a place for Commscamp? It’s a question we ask ourselves each time we run it. The event is deliberately democratic. Anyone can pitch an idea and if you’re public sector comms you can come. It’s also free and it is blindingly important that it remains so.

I’ve no interest in charging for the event and we don’t really have to mount a year-long campaign of getting in people’s faces to flog tickets. I’m really glad about that. When its commscamp time we’ll tell you. Otherwise, go about your business. We even only have sponsors who get the event and who we like.

While there’s a need to come together in an informal way compare notes and find a better way of doing things we’ll still do it. When that ends we’ll pack up.

I’ll be watching my daughter’s leaver’s school assembly this year

As fate would have it, days after we decided to take the year off my daughter came home from school with a letter. The letter gave the date of her leaver’s assembly as July 10, the day we’d earmarked for commscamp.

So, this year, I’ll miss being with people by the canal in Digbeth but I’d have hated to have had to miss out on my daughter’s last assembly at junior school.

Stay in touch

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Picture credit: Nigel Bishop.

Video credit: Steven Davies and Sophie Edwards at filmcafe.