Last night we had our first meeting at the Newcastle University Beehive Centre.
Even with the short notice we had around 20 people from the various user groups as well as some PHD students from the university in attendance. Groups represented were:
- ncl.rb Ruby
- Tyneside Linux Users Group
- Amazon Web Services Group
- Refresh Newcastle
- Open Source Network
- As well as PHD students studying Distributed Computing and Security at the Uni.
( Hope I have not missed anyone out ! )
The facilities that the University are offering us are excellent (and free of charge) with 3 lecture rooms plus some communal areas for more informal sessions. The only slight downside is that there is no Internet access so we will have to rely on 3G dongles etc.
We are going to try to grow the group and see how things develop over the next few months. The target for next month is to get 40 people attending so everyone who attended needs to bring a friend :).
The consensus from last night was we want to keep the meetings informal, lightly structured with “Birds of a Feather” talks / Lightning talks and general discussions followed by a trip to the pub for the all important chat over a pint.
I had a great time at the meeting, despite being severely food-deprived, but I especially enjoyed talking to everybody at the end of the ‘formal’ section.
I work at Newcastle University. There is campus-wide wifi. Employees and students should be able to pick up wifi in the Beehive using MAGPIE. They’ll need to establish a VPN connection using their login credentials – this is all explained on the docking service home page.
I’ll probably pop over to the next one if I’m still about!
You can indeed pick up the Magpie network loud and clear in the Beehive, unfortunately this network is not available to those of us who are not employed by the University or studying there.
So the rest of us will need to continue to use dongles until we find a provider who can offer us service at the Beehive for the event and in turn publicise their services to the vibrant community (hint! hint! 😉 ).