So, that was it. My 12th Byte Night.
For those of you not in the know, Byte Night is the annual sponsored sleepout for the IT industry.
And is many ways it was the best yet.
For a start it looks like breaking all records in terms of money raised. To date, we now have over £420,000 banked for Action for Children (AfC). With promises and pledges we are hoping that we will crash through the half-million barrier we targetted for this year.
That would make it a record year. In the teeth of a recession — how good is that?
Which just goes to show you that a recession doesn’t necessarily mean that we all retreat into our own individual shells and just worry about our own futures. In fact there were quite a few people there that were out of work but they were still raising thousands of money.
And, by the way, homelessness increases during a recession. People being out of work can lead to tensions in the house; teenagers are another mouth to feed when there’s no money coming in. All this leads to extra pressures. So, charities like Action for Children need all the help they can get during an economic downturn.
Secondly, this was the first time we had really pushed the regional events (or immersive experiences, as heard by a friend of mine at a pitch in California last week. This meant that we had over 100 people at each of the sleepouts in Reading, Manchester, and Edinburgh and over 30 at Newcastle as well as the 300 plus people who attended the London event.
Now we know that we can do it in the regions, we are confident that this event can grow and grow, both within these regions and within new ones.
What was also great was the involvement on the night of children who had been helped by AfC and programme managers who run some of the centres who help the homeless. Jess, now 21 and with a child herself, spoke of how the charity had helped her after she had run away when she was 14. She didn’t go into details about why she had run away but you got the feeling that she had had no choice.
She also talked about how she had moved around and made the point that no-one ever offered her a bed for the night unless they wanted something in return. She didn’t have to explain what that something might be but Sean, her programme manager, left no room for doubt when he said that they were always men and that they were ’scumbags’.
All of this was heartbreaking in many ways but re-inforced why we do this and reminded us that, no, homeless children aren’t there through choice. So, next time someone says that, you are now allowed to disavow them of that misapprehension — with extreme prejudice.
Another good thing - we always have to work hard to get the balance right between a charity event and a party. I got the feeling that we got that about right this year.
And the best bit? Well that comes at about 6am when everyone starts to stir and pack up their sleeping bags. We were cold during the night — boy, did that wind come up (the guys in Edinburgh had gales) — and it was really, really uncomfortable. But you wake up as a group — a group of people that have done something together, that have been united in a single cause, raising money to help children get their lives back. So, we all felt very pleased with ourselves. And, why shouldn’t we?
A personal success? I had to say a few words at the beginning of the evening and I talked about the right of children to have a childhood. This is not just about children having the right not to be abused, this is about having the right to be a child. I said that every child should have the opportunity to build sandcastles. When I spoke to Jess later she said that that had really struck home, and she would make sure that every year she would find a way to build sandcastles with her own child.
Unfortunately, homelessness will never go away, which means that I’ll be doing this for another 12 years. But it does feel good to make a difference, even if it’s just for one night a year.
