DAVID RICE

I keep saying there’s not enough social get togethers in Belfast for the computing industry. So when I heard about BarcampBelfast I was delighted to see some movement, big thanks to Matt Keenan at OpCode Solutions for organising it.

So I was meant to be doing a lightning presentation on Ruby, and why I love it. Funny thing is that staying up the night before to finish it meant that I slept in for BarCamp and missed the morning session. Ironic, no?

But all was not lost, I got to talk with a lot of people about my thoughts for a co-working space in Belfast. Just like what Paul Campbell and co. have just recently setup in Dublin go check Co-working Ireland if you’re curious. I am Really interested in this so there will definitely be more on it later!

The talks I saw were all great, informative and really casual with a lot of participation with the listeners.

• Denise Fay from Achieve Marketing talked about Marketing a tech company on a shoe-string budget
• David Newman from QUB talked about e-consulting work and the benefits of using open source therein
• Thomas Pedoussaut presented about creating Easy VPNs with OpenVPN
• Alastair McDermott of logon.ie presented something about Internet Marketing

The food was brilliant! An amazing mountain of pizzas arrived from Cafe Renoir at lunchtime (well, breakfast for me :)), I was loving that because it’s my absolute favourite pizza place in Belfast.

The craic was also hovering somewhere around 90. In the spirit of BarCamp we invaded Bar 12 on Lower Crescent (just off Botanic Avenue) for some refreshment that was much needed. The Moghul Indian restaurant, only a stones throw away from Bar 12 was the venue for a tasty feast to round off the day.

Really looking forward to the next one now.