Update (30/06/24) - Part 2 is now out and the recap post is now complete! Yay!!
#EuroMeetup2024 has now concluded and boy-oh-boy, it was definitely an event that far exceeded what I have ever organised and hosted, and thankfully, everything went as well as they could despite minor hiccups here and there. 
As a co-organiser for the event, I thought that I would write this recap more from that perspective, letting you all in on the fun (and chaos) of organising and planning! Also, as a co-host, I was running around so much that it’s really hard to experience the moment properly. So, I hope that the other attendees or @PeteMHW , co-organiser/co-host, would be in a better position to share their experiences of EuroMeetup with you.
This recap is actually my third draft 
; I originally wanted a short summary but the post grew in considerable length that I had no choice but to split it into parts, and in the end, I started filling in more details.
For most, I hope you’ll enjoy the photos, videos and skimming through the details. But I also hope that those with (lots of) patience (and time), will enjoy the longer read. We’re not trying to toot our own horn, but we hope that the community will be inspired to put together big events such as EuroMeetup.
[ Overview ]
We had 35 registered and confirmed attendees hailing from 13 countries (Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, USA and UK). Some like @PaulPavlinovich and @jayasimha78 came from a fair distance away; Melbourne, Australia and California, USA. Others, like @JaneBurunina and @YuliiaZa , had to overcome visa application hurdles (to clarify, they did make it to the event but their application process wasn’t easy)! And then we have our UK locals who also had much fun with the unpredictable UK railways! So, a MASSIVE thanks to everyone who made it to EuroMeetup and entrusted their precious time to Pete and I!
Across 4 days, we had put together a schedule of 20 activities, all of which could easily be a standalone meet-up activity! And we then had to weave how attendees would travel to all the various venues for the activities, grab their meals and breaks etc. It was a beast of organisation with very little room for mistakes/delays.
Also, this is a community led event so all attendees covered their own expenses (travel, accommodation, food etc). But we did get some support from Google, and we channelled that into several activities.
[ Goals ]
Pete and I had experiences as attendees in the past two EuroMeetups in Munich (2023) and Ghent (2019), but rather than repeating the same format, I was really keen to change things up and include elements from my experiences at the various official Local Guides Summits (2016, 2017) and Connect Live (2018, 2019) events.
A couple of key elements that I tried my best to introduce were:
- Interactive - create experiences that required the attendees to work together or to communicate with local businesses
- Educational - provide opportunities to learn from each other, share experiences and discuss problems/challenges
But we also wanted to ensure that we kept the fun and social aspects of the original EuroMeetup event. Pete was keen to make sure we had time to just chat and enjoy each other’s company whilst I was pushing for a lot of things to do/see. Did we get the balance right? Read on and find out! 
[ Organising & Planning ]
I love Manchester and to me, it’s a perfect city for a 4 day event because it’s very easy to travel around by foot or public transport, if necessary. It’s a very compact city with interesting neighbourhoods that are distinct from each other and allow for different types of experiences.
Manchester is a blend of old and new, traditional and modern, corporate and hipster; so it gave us a lot of options for things to do and see. We started planning as early as January because I was keen to reach out to local businesses as soon as possible to make sure that they could keep their schedules clear for us.
In reality, most of the businesses we spoke to don’t plan that far ahead so most could only verbally agree to our proposals. It was probably from mid-April onwards, if not later, when we could really see our ideas mature into more detailed plans.
Also, I only got back to the UK at the end of April and that’s when I could really ramp up my discussions with the various local businesses. It’s a no brainer, but having discussions face to face is so much more efficient and we got a lot of things sorted out quickly.
It is also a good idea to speak to several businesses and to explore different options because we had options to fall back on when others failed to mature.
[ Tools ]
From January to the end of April, Pete and I were continents apart with an 8 hours time zone difference. Also, Pete is based in Clitheroe so he can’t always just nip into Manchester to check things out. So, we really relied a lot on online tools to help share and keep information up to date.
Our tools include:
- Google Drive - for sharing files, documents etc
- Google Sheets and Docs - very essential for keeping plans organised
- Google Photos - for the group album
- Canva - we have a shared group account so Pete has easy access to all the design files and mock-ups. Also, it’s great for finding graphics/resources that I could export as .svg files that I can use in a more advanced editor
- Affinity Designer - advance graphic editor; the majority of my design work is with this app (side note: Canva bought Affinity a few months ago)
- Online resources - these sites are great for finding free (for personal use) resources:
- Pixabay - images, music, vectors etc
- Font Squirrel - free fonts for commercial use
- Vecteezy - vectors
- Davinci Resolve - advance video editor; I have a Studio licence but I’m pretty sure that the free licence is good enough to meet your video editing needs. It has a bit of a learning curve as it has lots of advanced tools.
The majority of the tools above have some level of free tiers so you should be able to use them without having to pay for any licences. 
Feel free to share your own set of tools/resources in the comments below!
[ Designs ]
Luckily, I like doing graphic designs so I could happily spend many, many hours working away at different designs and iterations and variations. For this event, I did have a deadline to complete all design work by the end of March so that I could place orders for them in Malaysia and pick them up before going back to the UK. Below are all my design work for this event… well, those that made it to the final selection as I also had quite a few other designs and variants that didn’t make the mark.
Cost of printing is vastly cheaper than in the UK so we managed to save quite a bit of money on the welcome pack which consisted of a lanyard, ID card (and sleeve), stickers, and pin badges.
T-shirt designs:
I wanted a design that could differentiate between locals and visitors so it had this text that either said “Proudly” or “Honorary”. I also chose “Manc” (a term used to call someone from Manchester) rather than “Manchester” because it was shorter and easier to turn into something bold and eye-catching.
Attendees were encouraged to print their own t-shirts to wear but it is optional because we know that it was already costing a lot for a lot of them to travel to Manchester and get put up in accommodations. As a backup, I also ordered some iron-on designs that made it a lot cheaper (attendees only had to bring their own t-shirt).
By the way, can you guess who the four faces belong to? See the end of this post for the answers! Oh, here are some hints (from left to right): a singer, an activist, a scientist, a comedienne.
Lanyard designs:
Except for the t-shirt designs, the attendees didn’t know they were going to get a welcome pack that included a lanyard, ID card, stickers, pin badges and a hand fan. Some were funded by myself as my gift to the attendees, some were funded by Google. Anyway, for the lanyard, I came up with two variants because there was a secret activity that was only revealed during the Welcome Dinner and that secret was that those wearing the blue lanyards became the Blue Team and those wearing the red, the Red Team. More on this team concept under the Challenges section in Part 2 of my recap.
Also, on the other side of the lanyard you will find this bold yellow-black pattern which pays homage to the Hacienda music scene. And I also added quotes from famous people who came from Manchester or became influential during their time in Manchester. At the end of each quote, is the birthplace of the famous person.
Can you guess the famous people that the quotes refer to? Answers at the end of this post. 
Quote 1: "I don’t want to make pompous, serious films; I like films that have a kind of vivacity about them " - Born in Radcliffe, Greater Manchester
Quote 2: “We’re not arrogant, we just believe we’re the best band in the world” - Born in Manchester
Quote 3: “A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human” - Born in Maida Vale (not in Manchester)
Quote 4: “An atom, with all its parts, has exactly the same weight as when it was created” - Born in Eaglesfield (not in Manchester)
Quote 5: “We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers” - Born in Moss Side
Quote 6: “I do maintain that if your hair is wrong, your entire life is wrong” - Born in Davyhulme, Greater Manchester
Quote 7: “The work of a team should always embrace a great player but the great player must always work” - Born in Glasgow (not in Manchester)
Quote 8: “If my mum or my wife says that something isn’t funny, I know I’ve struck gold” - Born in Farmworth, Greater Manchester
Quote 9: “We are the cosmos made conscious and life is the means by which the universe understands itself” - Born in Oldham, Greater Manchester
ID card design:
There are two designs for each side of the IC card. On one side, it is just the basic event logo (variant design) where attendees could write down their name below for easy identification. And on the other side, there is an isometric design that ties really well with the hexagon shape which is something I keep using especially for my stickers, and also, to represent Manchester’s association with bees (hexagons = bee hives). You may have noticed that I used an extended/wider version of the isometric design for the t-shirt as well.
The ID card is also “interactive” as it became a place to collect stickers that were used in the Challenges. I wanted the ID card to function as a “podium” of pride to showcase how well you’re doing in the team challenges. More on this in the Challenges section in Part 2.
Sticker designs:
We have the standard event sticker that was used as souvenirs/promo and we also had stickers that were used specifically for the Challenges. And you may recall, we ran a community challenge and the winning design came from @Praniketmore ! 
For the Challenges stickers, the concept was that different stickers were awarded to the teams based on how well they performed for the challenges. A Gold variant if they came in first place, and a Silver variant for second place.
And yes, the Silver variant is basically a version with cats! 
The power of being the designer and doing whatever I wanted! 
Badges designs:
At the Connect Live 2019 event, one of the activities that the Google team organised was that attendees could show their Maps profile to the Google team and collect different badges if they had the corresponding Master badge. And we would then pin them proudly on our event lanyard.
I really enjoyed that and I wanted something similar so we prepared some badges to give to attendees and also suggested to attendees to bring pin badges as souvenirs from their home country.
Hand fan designs:
This was a self-funded item because I wasn’t sure if it serves a useful purpose. It’s a bit gimmicky (I guess the same could be argued about badges and stickers but the cost of these fans were a bit more); it can be used as promo prop (people can hold up the fan with either the event logo or the word “Eh Up” or it can actually be functional if it gets too hot and a hand fan is needed! But, we’re talking about Manchester so, of course, it was never going to be hot enough for a fan!! 
Oh, and because it was self-funded, I threw in a QR code to my YouTube channel and a second QR code for the Local Guides program. 
Tote bag designs:
These designs were for the activity at Fred Aldous where attendees got to choose one of three designs to go on their tote bag. Like the rest, I had a number of designs that didn’t make the cut but I shall not bore you with them (maybe!).
The final designs were quite straightforward in their purpose:
- Design 1 - a simple promo of the event with some lines to show movement
- Design 2 - a design that incorporated elements that represent the home countries of the attendees
- Design 3 - a design that incorporated the first names of the attendees in a fun ‘word search’ style design. I also realised a bit too late that it should be called Name Search instead! I used an online free tool to generate the puzzle.
Wallpapers for Mobile Phones and Smart Watches:
And just to complete the whole set, I also created some wallpapers for mobile phones and smart watches for the attendees to use if they choose to.
And that’s the end of Part 1 of my recap. It’s probably not as interesting as most recaps but hopefully it will show to you the scope of EuroMeetup2024 and from there, you can figure out how to scale it to your own meet-up. A lot of the stuff that I did are not critical but I do like playing around with graphic design stuff so that was something I poured a lot of my time into.
In Part 2, I’ll cover the various activities and challenges and any remaining items that people may find interesting! I hope to complete Part 2 soon so stay tuned! Part 2 is now out!! If you have any questions feel free to ask them in the comments below!
Answers to the mystery faces:
From left to right - Noel Gallagher (from the band Oasis), Emmeline Pankhurst (activist), Alan Turing (scientist), Victoria Wood (comedienne)
Answers to the mystery quotes:
Quote 1: "I don’t want to make pompous, serious films; I like films that have a kind of vivacity about them " - Danny Boyle, born in Radcliffe, Greater Manchester
Quote 2: “We’re not arrogant, we just believe we’re the best band in the world” - Noel Gallagher of Oasis, born in Manchester
Quote 3: “A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human” - Alan Turing, born in Maida Vale (not in Manchester)
Quote 4: “An atom, with all its parts, has exactly the same weight as when it was created” - John Dalton, born in Eaglesfield (not in Manchester)
Quote 5: “We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers” - Emmeline Pankhurst, born in Moss Side
Quote 6: “I do maintain that if your hair is wrong, your entire life is wrong” - Morrissey, born in Davyhulme, Greater Manchester
Quote 7: “The work of a team should always embrace a great player but the great player must always work” - Sir Alex Ferguson, born in Glasgow (not in Manchester)
Quote 8: “If my mum or my wife says that something isn’t funny, I know I’ve struck gold” - Peter Kay, born in Farmworth, Greater Manchester
Quote 9: “We are the cosmos made conscious and life is the means by which the universe understands itself” - Brian Cox, born in Oldham, Greater Manchester
