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1st Annual BIG Charity Digital Pub Quiz Round-up

As the hangovers finally lift over the Manifesto studio (some of us aren’t as young as we used to be) we have a chance to look back at a hugely successful evening with our friends, old and new, in the charity digital sector. Many questions were answered, not least among which were “which CEO knows all the words to ‘Bills, bills, bills’ by Destiny’s Child?” and “how long does it take a 3D printer to print five halves of a third place trophy?”

15 to 1 they’ll all make it

The tube strike made for an anxious couple of days prior to the BIG quiz at Manifesto HQ as we fretted over whether London’s charity digital teams would brave the angry streets to get to us.

Luckily, London’s charity digital teams are all awesome and, come 7pm the hall at Holy Redeemer church was packed out with 14 teams from 10 charities: Anthony NolanBloodwise, Cafédirect Producers’ FoundationCancer Research UKThe Children’s SocietyComic ReliefHelpAgeHemiHelpMovember and Parkinson’s UK.

Over 4 rounds and 40 gruelling questions the teams would compete to ensure that their cause would be the beneficiary of a £1k donation from Manifesto.

Let the games begin…

Countdown to quiz time

The Holy Redeemer is really a fantastic little venue with a real old-school music hall vibe. Members of the Manifesto team didn’t therefore have to do too much to get it looking all event-y and could instead concentrate their afternoon efforts on preparing the bar, rigging the AV and stocking the kitchen with the delicious wares of Flour Patisserie, who were providing the mid-quiz treats.

5 triple layer cakes with beautiful decorations (before we ate them!)

A Tweet wall was erected to capture the night’s best puns, selfies and appeals to the judges for leniency in answer-marking (which was never granted). The best Tweet of the night would earn the Tweeter a bottle of bubbly.

tweet-wall for everyone's great tweets to show live through the event

There was also the 3D printer to set up: while the first and second placed teams would win a shiny new trophy and shield respectively, both engraved to record their triumph, our third placed team would get to take home (and keep) a 3D printed cup of our own design.

Our 3d printer at work printing a pink trophy

We’re no Masterminds

Jim Bowes was compère, quiz master and impromptu Beyoncé tribute act for the evening and kicked off the quiz promptly at not-too-long-after-7 with the general knowledge round. You can see all the questions and answers in another post.

What with this being a Manifesto quiz though, the general knowledge round was rather hard to write. If it’d been a tech knowledge round, a video game round, or an Agile software development round we’d have been fine but under the circumstances we thought it’d be best to tap the knowledge of our forbears by purchasing a set of Trivial Pursuit (Genus Edition, Bite-Size) questions from a local (unnamed) charity shop for £1.

3D printer update: not looking good. First attempt was a failure, possibly due to dust on the printing plate. After a quick restart, the second trophy printing attempt begins.

The Price is Right, thanks to WP Engine

While round 1 answers were marked by our diligent backstage team up-front Jim was inviting our partners from WP Engine, the managed WordPress hosting company, to make a very special announcement: that they would be doubling Manifesto’s top prize donation. Which meant the night’s winning team would walk away with a hefty £2k for the cause they represent. Leaving one very important question: who would be taking home the glory, the money and the coveted trophy? On with the quiz!

Wheel… of… Fortune

Next up was Colin’s round, appropriately cheese-themed, in which participants identified cheeses based on well, eating them, before answering some cheese-based questions.

Then came the technology round in which our budding quizzees attempted to identify video games based on short samples of their soundtracks as well as answering some tough questions on, among other things, chess programmes.

3D printer update: it’s down again! Someone call Barbara!

The Voice

The last round was a music round and gave one of the musical Manifestonians, Rich Hanson, the chance to show off his keyboard skills on the venue’s upright Joanna.

Rich played the intro to ten famous tunes and it was up to our intrepid teams to identify both the song and the artist. Of course at this point we’d all had a few drinks and nobody had had more few drinks than the MC himself which meant that some of these questions became little more than thinly veiled excuses for Jim Bowes to lead an old fashioned knees-up of the Mother Brown variety.

Luckily soberer heads prevailed and, instead of abandoning the quiz format to an impromptu gig, answer sheets were collected and cake was delivered to exhausted quiz-goers, while in the back, among a flurry of pencil scratches and calculations, the winners slowly emerged…

Winner Takes All

Indisputably in first place with 28.5 points came ‘Be LL Kool Gabe’, a team from Cancer Research UK with whom Manifesto have worked, and continue to work on, many successful projects.

Winning CRUK team celebrating with champagne and wigs! Very happy people.

The team from CRUK win a £2,000 donation to help beat cancer sooner, funded equally by Manifesto and WP Engine, as well as the glory that comes with being the first name engraved on the (soon to be) world famous Manifesto Annual BIG Charity Digital Pub Quiz winners trophy.

A Bullseye of a tie-break

The totaliser revealed that two teams were in second place with 27 points each: the team from HemiHelp, the charity for children and young people with hemiplegia, and the team from Cafédirect Producers’ Foundation, which works with smallholder farmers across 12 countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

A tie-break was necessary and, luckily, we had prepared for just such a scenario. It was time to bring on the Colin darts: one man, one magnetic dartboard, three darts per team, highest score wins.

3D printer update: it’s touch and go. But please don’t touch it!

Every Second Counts

It goes without saying that the tie-breaker was tense, action-packed and faintly shambolic. Nevertheless a second place team did emerge: Cafédirect Producers’ Foundation, who won £400 for the charity from the entry-fee-prize pot as well as the runners-up shield, with their name engraved, for a whole 12 months.

Cafedirect Producers Foundation second place celebration photo - holding shield.

HemiHelp of course win the 3D printed cup and, because we couldn’t bear to see them walk away (almost) empty handed, we’re also donating £200 to their cause.

HemiHelp celebrating 3rd place pointing to their small but fun 3d printed 3rd place trophy!

3D printer update: success!

Tweet of the night

This gem from Faye Wakefield captured Movember’s attempt to form a human pyramid during the team photo segment of the evening. And because it wouldn’t have happened without them, we gave the team from the men’s health movement a bottle of fizz too.


Movember making a human pyramid for some crazy fun antics!

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