Hidden Earth 2023 was awesome!
Despite the later than usual announcement of the date, the lecture submissions were extremely strong indeed and some later submissions even had to be turned away and breaks narrowed to just 15 minutes due to the schedule being completely full! This may have been due to the lack of an event in 2020-2022, so quite a bit of ‘retrospective’ to report on, I guess we will find out next year.
It was a diverse schedule, with most UK regions well represented (including members of my own club flying the flag for northern England), and loads of expedition reports, technical, science, and general open discussion forums. It was very hard to choose which talks to attend. I found the talk on the future of club journals interesting (and clearly could have gone on much longer than it did). Rostam's talk on caver demographics was really thought provoking. I enjoyed the talk on the Quantocks, and nice to learn something about a very little known UK area.
The trade hall was a little quieter than usual (we missed you UKC) but still with some great stalls plus excellent photos and art on display. The video salon ‘cinema’ worked really well and there were some top-notch submissions; A couple of hours easily spent watching those on the big screen.
In particular, the CGI-type videos and lectures on 3D surveying highlighted that we aren’t far off being able to get the full visual caving experience in the comfort of your own home with a VR headset or extra-large screen. Hopefully, this technology will have been perfected even more in time for my retirement in a few decades
We had some of the usual equipment vendors (Starless River, Rude Nora, Robin Gray art and several others), and great to see our national caving magazine there with its new editors chatting to loads of people. Plus, club stalls, the SRT competitions, speleo-olympics and survey salon. So even though the total number of stalls and traders was lower than normal, there still felt like plenty going on.
Some of the usual competitions weren’t running this year due to limited volunteer resource and the last-minute confirmation of the venue, but this didn’t really detract too much.
The venue itself was good, ample parking, three lecture rooms and canteen in close vicinity and the trade hall a few minutes walk to stretch legs. The camping was less than five minutes walk off-site and was a nice flat school field. The venue’s catering team were smiley and friendly.
A great selection of beers and ciders on the bar as always. The Potholer was particularly good!
The weather was a little challenging; Thankfully dry and warm for Friday night setup which is the main thing (so at least we got tents set up in the dry), but turning to sporadic rain from lunchtime Saturday, and heavy rain on Sunday.
For the second time, the event embraced a live online lecture timetable, on display via screens at the trade hall, canteen/bar and outside the main lecture hall, along with availability on a smartphone. These seemed popular, as I saw very few people wandering around clutching paper timetables (which were also available as usual). Good to see Hidden Earth moving with the times.
I really enjoyed the stomp, and it was great to see so many student/younger cavers there, far more than I remember from previous recent years. For many of them I assume it will have been their first Hidden Earth. Dancing started earlier than usual, and the hall was packed thanks to DJ Basher. The slight whiff of sweat and beer lingered into Alan’s Scottish Roundup at 9:45 the following morning in the same hall.
I think that the total number of delegate-days was around 950, almost a record, which is really encouraging. I had worried that the long gap, and the late announcement might stifle the attendance, but this didn’t seem to be a problem. It was like we had never been away.
Lots of new names and faces too, which is always a good sign for the future. I really hope the success of this Hidden Earth will encourage more people to come along next year.
Overall, a classic Hidden Earth, with probably the most packed and diverse lecture schedule I have seen since I started coming to HE in 2007. The quality of the talks was very high. There were some nice modernising twists and innovative ideas, and I have a feeling that we will see more of that next year particularly if there is a little more time to promote/plan the event and recruit volunteers, including the return of a few of the omitted features including the survey competition and the delegates vote.
I had a great weekend, and a massive thank you to the organisers for making it happen. I have no doubt it entails thousands of volunteer hours across the entire team.
www.theguardian.com
