Blog :: Tick tick tick :: Geograph Britain and Ireland

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Tick tick tick

Juggling times, places and people — sorting the conference has to be a bit like running a railway station. All the good people planning to attend, most of the presenters, the helpers and the laid-back folk at the Circle will have been relieved not to have had an email from me today. We have the date, we have the venue, we have 95% of the programme. I still have to order some biscuits but otherwise it's almost put to bed. I can think about more important things like: what am I going to wear? Greys? The iconic yellow fleece? It caught my eye in this amazing recycling centre and it only cost a pound. Brilliant for the Brompton. Organising a conference is equally good exercise — I spend more and more time pacing up and down the kitchen. The event doesn't lend itself to a dress rehearsal, certainly not like this, so I'm learning to run a dress rehearsal in my head. One of the breakout themes is Getting involved: we need people to help develop Geograph and keep it running but there is a downside: getting involved seriously harms your submission rate. The backlog is growing. This recent contribution was taken in early October. The meat of the conference is to discuss how to pay for Geograph if Ordnance Survey's cash sponsorship dries up. Where shall we find the price of a cup of tea? The lines of Andrew Motion's Big Poem set the tone: "What if…? What if…? What if…?" We go to Sheffield "To greet and understand what lies ahead…" Every day I am astonished by this adventure, this unexpected journey from rookie contributor to rookie conference 'organiser' but most surprising and rewarding has been becoming part of this wonderful Geograph community.