European Camp ShopBot.

[gerald_d]

Bill, I think you are creating a wrong impression with the words "hopefully in a setting where we can have an open invitation to ALL who'd like to attend, rather than being limited to a specific number of potential openings...". NOBODY was told that there is not enough space for them. In fact, Robert Lofthouse already offered his unlimited venue up north on 11 July, but the final headcount made John's place the right fit. (A big batch of posts with invites and pictures have been deleted from this thread). Please don't make it sound like the door was locked - as we can attest, John's doors can't even close properly, never mind be locked!


Robert, can you think of an exhibition/expo covering SB-type stuff in the UK? Maybe pick a date around that?

[rhfurniture]

Woodmex October 06 NEC Birmingham.
http://www.wmsa.org.uk/Woodmex.php

[bob_lofthouse]

Well we might have started something now.

My gut feelings at present are that if I'm going to host a camp It doesn't matter to me if there are 5 people or 50 people.

I know from my own experience how much I learnt by attending John's camp and because of that in my opinion I considered it a great success.

Everyone knows and can see from the "frappr map site" how few botters there are in Europe compared to the states. So this might indicate that smaller camps and get togethers are appropriate rather than the USA style camps.

However, if botters did travel over from the states (which is not cheap) the Europeans (Gerald is included as an honorary European) would certainly benefit greatly.

I think if we were going to go for a large USA style camp then it would be best to hold it nearer the summer and if we were going to hold a smaller European style camp then I would say February.

As I have said these are just my initial thoughts

[hespj]

Yes, everybody was welcome to my humble barn. Because it is small, chaotic, and draughty (apparantly) I did say that numbers would be limited in the unlikely event of a rush on tickets*. I say "unlikely" because it seemed to me then, and seems to me now, that nobody is going to spend all year standing beside a ShopBot then spend their vacation and good money to stand by another ShopBot 3000 miles away. And there just aren't enough UK Shopbots to make a large gathering (I'd be interested to know how many).

It seems to me it's only ever going to work as a small event such as we had, or a very large event with all the bells and whistles in order to drag the needed people and expertise across the Atlantic. I think this would need a large input (including financial) from ShopBot.

If anybody is disappointed at the scale of the meeting we had at Bossington, we who attended weren't. In fact, since then, because of my dislike of the word "camp" I've thought of it as the "ShopBot EuroConference". I propose we call it this in future so that it's excellence is recognised.

John

*On the afternoon of the second day there were just two of us left messing about. There was no need to limit numbers.

[marshawk]

Draughts are OK as long as the foam is no more than an inch...

I would like to attend, but economics will be a big factor. I was thinking that a charter flight would be one idea to keep costs down for Stateside 'botters who wanted to go, but the savings would probably be cancelled by flights connecting to the charter.

One consideration is that, since we would be going to a seminar pertaining to our work, we could probably write off at least some of the expenses on our taxes.

Did I mention draughts?