When planning for this year’s conference kicked off back in January, it was decided that we would take a break in 2016. So, we wanted this year to be BIG!

We made this decision simply because of the time and effort involved to organise a conference of this scale. Every one of us that has been involved over the years has done so because we love the event and the community it supports, but we also all have full time jobs and have to do this over evenings and weekends. Organising a conference is a full-time job on its own, so fitting it around everything else leaves little time for sleep!

As I’m sure you all know, we recently released the first details of our lineup for our third (and my final) ShropGeek conference, (R)Evolution 2015. I can’t tell you how SUPER excited I am about this years event. We have a really awesome new concept featuring “monster dude” (our full website is on its way – its worth the wait, honestly), and this is definitely our best lineup yet!

We are still working on finalising a few things but in the interim here are a few more details about our lineup. Seriously, these guys are all so good I’m practically bouncing up and down with excitement! ~ grin!

Each year I get to make this super exciting announcement and this year is even more exciting than usual! Drum roll please….

Details of (R)Evolution 2015 so far have officially been revealed here: 2015.shropgeek-revolution.co.uk

Woohoo!  ~ grin!

As many of you know, we will be taking a break from organising (R)Evolution in 2016, so this year we are pulling out all of the stops. And honestly, I couldn’t be more excited about this year’s event (I know I say that every year, but seriously its going to be so awesome!). We have lots of things planned to make the day even more special but for now, here are the important facts: 

As I’m sure you all know by now, ShropGeek is so much more than just a monthly social. Over the years we’ve done all sorts of different types of events and as long as there is demand for them, we will continue to do so. However, very few things in life are genuinely free.

Myself, Pete White and everybody else that gets involved with organising events for ShropGeek all donate our time to do so, but there are still always overheads. And thats where we need your help…

There are many ways to get involved with ShropGeek but what we specifically need at the moment is some regular sponsorship for our Rebellion Meetups.

I’ve been saying this a lot this year, Shropgeek is evolving and making some pretty big changes to what we offer. Don’t panic, the social is never going to stop (unless people stop showing up of course! – but even then, I’m stubborn and would probably still go!), instead we are introducing lots and lots of really cool new stuff. YAY! ~ grin!

One such new thing is guest blog posts.

You see, we have this really lovely area on the website, already conveniently called Articles (anyone would think this wasn’t a coincidence…) which would be just perfect for all you super talented people to write stuff in! How perfect is that?

Joking aside, this has always been the original intention of the articles section, and the Shropgeek website in general. We have an amazing community of people, and have had lots of equally amazing people come in to the county to speak at our events too. Which means we have an unbelievable wealth of knowledge at our finger tips.

The events we organise go some way towards tapping into that knowledge and sharing it with others, but that’s just a few people within a room full. What about everyone else?

And so, we are asking you guys to step up and write an article for the Shropgeek website.

We are very excited to announce that tickets are now on sale for the (R)Evolution Conference, which is taking place on Friday 26 September 2014, at the Shropshire Conference Centre, Shrewsbury.

This will be the 5th (R)Evolution conference and once again, we have 8 of the web’s most revolutionary thinkers and space for 200 attendees. So whether you’re a web industry veteran or just starting your career, you won’t want to miss out on the chance to be part of one of the friendliest web conferences in the UK.

Unlike the chosen image suggests, we are not holding wood-working workshops (although we would certainly consider it if there was interest). Instead, in May we will be hosting the first two (of what we hope will be many) workshops. These first workshops will be focussing on WordPress at varying levels:

The beginning of March saw Shropgeek become a limited company. Hurrah! We are really VERY excited about this, because it is the beginning of a new era for us.

So why a limited company?

I’m going to be brutally honest here: it started off all about the money, but later become much more about the services my company was offering.

As explained on the about page, Shropgeek started life as a monthly social 6 years ago but now, we also host quarterly Rebellion events and our annual web conference, (R)Evolution. These events have bills to be paid, tickets to sell and usually sponsorship as well.

Its been a long time coming but… (drum roll please) …we can finally unveil the new logo and brand for Shropgeek. TADA!!!

We are really excited about this. Shropgeek, may be into its 6th year now but we have never had one, unified brand before. For a long time we did have a simple WordPress blog which was my (Kirsty’s) first ever WordPress design and build. It worked for a while but at the time, we were only organising monthly socials, and therefore the simple blog post format turned out to be really hard to maintain. After all, how many different ways are there to review a night out in the pub?

Shropgeek has come a long way since its humble beginnings back in 2008 though. With us hosting more and more events we decided it was time the website had a face lift and a proper brand was created. But, it needed to be something worthy of the events we now host…