London event venues

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Venues for events in London. We have a few ideas for pub events, but what about hack weekends, presentation events, and training sessions?

OpenStreetMap is a not-for-profit organisation and historically we've tended to get by with very little money changing hands (even for important things like servers let alone running events) Obviously we could organise things differently, but for the moment we're only really interested in finding free venues, which is not impossible given the good cause nature of our mission.

List ideas here for organisations which might/will provide us with a room or space of a non-pub variety, to hold an OpenStreetMap event. Indicate capacity, availability of internet and wifi. For running training type events we would also be interested in computer rooms with terminals.

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Specific ideas which probably work

  • UCL geomatics department (contact Muki Hacklay) - They regularly play host to geomob events in a lecture room. It seems likely we'd be able to do the same if we wanted to do that kind of event. They have also run classes involving a computer room UCL Masters Student mapping party Sept 2010 although this was for their students (with logins).
  • London Hackspace https://london.hackspace.org.uk - Capacity ~18. We went to the hackspace on London Hack Weekend May 2010. This was free on the basis that they're keen to do the cool thing and support projects like OSM although they'll always suggest a donation, and suggest we join hackspace! (they're a for-fun strapped-for-cash organisation too). The hackspace moved location several times. In 2010 we went to Barnsbury for a hack weekend, but then later in 2010 they'd move to north Shoreditch where we did Pakistan Remote mapping Workshop Oct 2010. We never made it to their easterly Bethnal Green location before they moved out West to Wembley (map)

Vague ideas and other listings to investigate

  • Catapults - These are large government organisations, with offices, and with a mission to promote innovation. They should be supportive of OpenStreetMap if we can make the case for it. Digital Catapult and Connected placed catapult are both based in London. Additionally there's the Satellite Systems Catapult in Oxford and the Transport System Catapult in Milton Keynes.
    • Connected placed catapult - Harry worked at there back when it was called Future Cities Catapult, years ago now (doing transport data stuff). He didn't manage to pusuade them to host back then (not for free)
    • Digital catapult is near Euston. They have hosted various tech events (such as CleanWeb) in the past.
  • Arup (engineering consultants) have hosted HOT Missing Maps event at their offices in Bloomsbury, complete with excellent catering! Harry has also spoken at an Open Data GIS conference there. He has several contacts, and has asked about hack weekends. Weekends are a bit more awkward security wise, but might be possible. Requires some persuasion.
  • Accenture (big consulting firm) hosted a HOT Missing Maps event at their offices in the city. They also quite recently hosted OSGeo UK, and OpenUK events.
  • The guardian offices in Kings Cross host various large hack events including all the rewired state events (harry's been to a few). Also (for a fee) hosted WhereCamp.EU conference. They have a large lecture theatre, and a set of more dinky little meeting rooms, and will also open up their hotdesking
  • The "ec" building on Stukeley street has a really sneakily hidden cafe on the top floor. Probably not technically open to the public (just for students) but there's nothing to stop people walking in and up there. Seems to always have big tables free, and wifi. This would be too risk for any sizeable event needing serious organisation, but might be OK for a sneaky mini-meet-up.
  • All universities have lots of suitable rooms. Some contacts we're aware of already:
    • UCL see above. Also contacts in UCL CASA and the geography departments.
    • Imperial College - We used to have good contacts there because they were hosting our servers (maybe they still host some?) . Gravitystorm used to work on the sysadmin team there a long time ago. Other alumni include Matt, Harry Wood, and more recently Thomaswood
    • City university - City hosted geomob once.
    • Royal Holloway University - contact Jenny Kynaston - They ran an OpenStreetMap mapping party once. This university is sadly nowhere near holloway road. It's way out west.
  • The open data institute [1] is a government tech city thing. We used to have lots of contact while Harry was in the building working at transportAPI. We went there for London Hack Weekend Feb 2013, a HOT typhoon Haiyan event, and 2014 London HOT Congo Mapathon. Around 2018 they seemed to have meltdown and laid off all the team of great tech people, so no contacts there any more sadly. But... we could still try to contact them about hosting events.
  • Greater London Authority at City Hall - was an awesome venue for Hack weekend & technical workshop June 2010. Long time ago now. Organised by User:TomChance back when they were in the round building by Tower Bridge. Maybe they could be persuaded to host something at their new spiky building in docklands.

removed options

  • Mozilla - Had a "co-working space" in Soho WC2N 4AZ and at one stage seemed keen on hosting interesting tech events. Wikimedia UK had events there. But it looks like they closed up all London offices: https://wiki.mozilla.org/London
  • MapQuest london offices near Tottenham Crt Rd. - Been there several times. It was becoming the default option for hack weekends but. User:Matt used to be the front man, but no longer works there, and it seems MapQuest scaled down their London operation, and in fact their OpenStreetMap operations. Boo :-(
  • Open Knowledge Foundation used to have a "centre for creative collaboration" near kings x. Since moved out
  • Skills Matter - Used to host a lot of tech events at their venues in Clerkenwell. Sadly they stopped doing this a few years ago. The company seems to have folded.
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