It’s only just dawning on me now that tomorrow over 100 people are going to be turning up at the Manchester Evening News headquarters and engaging in an event that has virtually no planning involved in it whatsoever.

There is no schedule, no idea of how many people want to talk, nor any indication of whether everybody who has signed up has really just conducted an elaborate hoax and I’ll be sat there all on my own all day long.

I’m currently experiencing slight nerves and fatigue, because you have no idea how much work it takes to organise an event without any real planning.

Everything is about guess work and executive decisions. How much food do we actually need? What if we end up with too much? How do we give the prizes away? What are the logistics of moving people in and out of the building? Given the nature of the event until this week I kept the answers as nothing more than sketches and figured I’d work it out “closer to the day”.

This week then has been about forming a clear picture of what is going to be involved and how to manage it all. It looks as though tomorrow is going to be a great day now, but it’s all still “are we really going to try and do this?”

I’m going to really enjoy Sunday morning, regardless.

This week also saw the birth of the Google Group (which in turn produced a plan for some of us to meet tonight at the Bull’s Head near Piccadilly around 7pm), and as expected a few people had to drop-out. Alas, the waiting list went for a burden mid-week, so I’m having to re-open registrations. As I write this there are 2 tickets left over at the signup page. There may be other tickets available over the course of today, but at 5pm the list is locked and if your name isn’t down, you’re not coming in.

I also want to give a big thanks in advance to two groups of people without whose help and understanding I wouldn’t have managed to get this done this week.

First, Adaptavist who hired me to produce a back-end accounts system which is now a fortnight over-due and running. They’ve been more forgiving and understanding than a humble contractor deserves, and I’m now looking forward to wrapping up this work today that has been delayed by constant BarCamp interruption. They’re sponsoring the after-party about half of us are going to as well because they’re that cool, and I owe them a big, big thanks.

Secondly, Liquid Bronze, who have been cheering me on and helping with some of the logistics. Today they’re helping move food around despite this also being the day they move office. Quite frankly, they deserve thanks for that alone, but Andy Threlfall being a friend who knows me too well has done the sensible thing of provoking me into sitting down and thinking about precise details that I would normally wing.

If things go to plan and tomorrow everything slots into place like it looks as though it will, it’s in no small part thanks to these guys.