No playing with Raspberry Pi hardware this evening. Instead I went out into the real world and actually talked to people! Of course some of that talking ended up being about Raspberry Pi, Arduino and the like…

I live in Ipswich, the county town of Suffolk, and the reason for all this exercise was the inaugural meeting of Sync Ipswich. In their own words:

SyncIpswich is a community of developers, designers, leaders, entrepreneurs all with a common love of technology and making things happen.
We welcome anyone who loves technology, has start-up ideas, wants help, wants to hangout with like-minded & passionate people.

The first meeting took place at the Eastern Enterprise Hub, and was part social and networking and part presentation. We were informed about the plans and sponsors for the group, and then entertained and educated by Daniel Wagner-Hall of Google, who talked about the challenges and approaches of building bug-proof software in an organization the size of Google. Fun, and very much in alignment with my own beliefs. Dan played to a packed room of well over 80 people – very impressive for a first and somewhat techy subject.

When the presentations were over we grabbed what remained of the free drinks, then moved to a nearby pub where the networking and discussion moved up a notch. I spoke with lots of people who I hadn’t seen for a while, in some cases years, and also got to chat to some interesting new faces I find it really encouraging that there is such a thriving interest in technology and business here in what might be perceived as a somewhat sleepy provincial town.

And this is in addition to all the other technology groups such as IPRUG, Front End Suffolk, Suffolk Digital, and so on. Things are hotting up.

I also found out today that there is a group of people trying to get a “hackspace” started in Ipswich too. If you are in this part of the country, and interested in technology and/or the maker movement in general, please consider joining with this group so we can make this happen!