But we’ve now confirmed a new date with IBM, who have kindly reshuffled things their end:

Saturday 9 March
Same place, same times (10am-5pm)

What happens now?

If you already held a ticket to UKGovcamp in January and can still make the new date, sit back and relax – you’re already booked.

If you can’t make the new date (boo!) then please drop us a line back or cancel your ticket directly on the Eventbrite site, so we can offer it to someone else. We did our best to pick a date that wouldn’t clash too much with other things, but we know that a few people may not be able to join us now – sorry about that. Curse the snow.

Tickets aren’t transferable (you’ll still need to bring photo ID on the day in order to gain admission), so if you can’t make it, please just cancel your ticket rather than try to pass it on.

If you know someone who’d like to come, ask them to add themselves to the waiting list at: http://ukgc13.eventbrite.com. There’s a long list though, so it’s a bit of a long shot – sorry.

Thanks again for your patience, and hope to see you in March.

As snow starts to fall steadily outside the window, and forecast for much of the country is for 5-20cm of snow today, with more over the weekend, we’ve taken the difficult decision to postpone tomorrow’s event.

Bah.

Lots of campers and sponsors (and not to mention IBM staff we need to help us run the day) are likely to struggle to get in tomorrow morning, and even more so to get home afterwards – and not just because of the free bar.

The last thing we want is to see Govcampers stranded, so we’ve agreed with IBM to look for a new date hopefully in February to run the event.

What happens now?

We’ll be in touch in due course with all the campers booked to come tomorrow, and offer them the option to rebook a ticket for the rescheduled date once that’s confirmed. If there are spaces left at that point, we’ll open up more tickets to the waiting list.

But I’d booked hotels and trains!

Gah! If you’ve booked travel or accommodation for UKGovcamp and aren’t able to use them or get refunds – and that’s likely to cause you a real problem financially – drop us a line and we’ll see what we can do to help from the Govcamp coffers.

But we’re online collaboration whizzes, dude!

Well, it’s true that via the miracle of Twitter, blogging, Google Hangouts and more, there are lots of good chats that have already been happening online and plans for more. Follow the #ukgc13 hashtag for the latest.

Booze keeps you warm

While we’re postponing Saturday night’s drinks along with the main event, a merry band led by Social Secretary Hadley will still be trudging to The Old Monk off Victoria St from 6pm tonight for some drinks, with the first few on the UKGovcamp tab. If you’re brave (and local) enough to join them, bottoms up!

We’re off to make snowmen now to cheer ourselves up. See you all in a few weeks.

Photo credit: Martin Linkov

It’s fair to say demand for UKGovcamp tickets has been even more bonkers than usual this year.

While still pretty copious, our new home for 2013 at IBM is a tad smaller than the one we’ve had previously, so we’ve only got about 150 spaces available. Right now, we’ve got just over 130 tickets booked and a stonking waiting list of around 200 people who’d like to come. We’ve been trying to make sure that our kind sponsors (who make the day, and the other Govcamp events we support, possible) get to send someone along, and will then open up the remaining tickets, including any returns, to regular Govcampers probably early in the New Year. So, if you have a ticket and think it’s unlikely you’ll be able to make it now, please drop Steph a line or cancel the ticket yourself via Eventbrite so someone else can use it.

Even so, there’s likely to be a lot of disappointed campers, and we’re thinking about how we can make sure the event is as easy as possible to follow online. Though we’ve tried webcasting in the past, take-up has been pretty low so we’re more likely to try and make sure as many sessions as possible are liveblogged/tweeted and the results are aggregated helpfully online somewhere, alongside any slides or links.

A big thank you to the 20 or so Campmakers who signed up to help with various jobs around the event. We’ll be in touch with you all about what that will entail in early January, and with a few of you earlier to help us get the UKGovcamp PR ball rolling.

And an equally big thank you to the fabulous sponsors who have come on board recently, ensuring UKGovcamp can go ahead and also funding at least six further events during 2013. Take a bow GovDelivery, Bytemark Hosting, Clinked, Collaboration Works, Surevine, The Social Simulator along with early birds Delib, Podnosh and Kahootz.

We’ll be finalising t-shirt designs in the next couple of days for printing over Christmas, so if you’d like to join them, please get in touch.

Have a very merry Christmas, and we’ll see you in January.