So I went to my first ethereum meetup

So I went to my first Ethereum meetup in my city, and I want to write a little bit about how it went, who I met and the talks that happened.

Here is the link to the Meetup which was hosted at ThoughtWorks.  

It started how all good meetings should start, drinks, pizza and mingling/networking. I found all of the people who attended really open and ready for discussion. While the talk of theDao did take a lot of light, there was still a lot of really good discussion on past, future and current uses for ethereum and cryptocurrencies in general. The mix of people where very diverse, anyone from traders, to coders to people interested in the ideas behind it all.

The first talk - Sam - A Breakdown of the Solidity Language

Sam struck me as very knowledgable, he has quite a good background spread across a number of different programming disciplines. You can find the talk and a link to his github here. He started with an quick overview of his career, why he was giving this talk and a brief overview of how ethereum works in general. 

If you look at the slides you will find that the 80 slides of information really show how much Sam has read into this and understands it, even though he has said he has only just started getting into the idea of solidity programming.

I won't try to explain to much about the talk as I am still going through the slides and getting the information in as much as I can. I have been told the video will be uploaded so I will post that for anyone interested when it goes up.

The second - TheDao and should we fork or not.

I have had many talks on slack, reddit, and other forms of social media about this topic. However, when you are in a group of like minded people talking about it, nothing beats it. (By like minded, I definitely don't mean agree which made it even more interesting). The talk was always civil and many people asked questions or made statement, sometimes even questioning their own views just for the dicussion. Again, this was recorded so anyone interested, I will post it when I can.

My Summary -

The discussion continued a lot further into the night, and we found ourselves ushered out as it was getting late, the discussions continued further in the lifts and lobby and left me with more questions than answers (In the best way possible). To wrap up, Thoughtworks was the perfect place to hold this event and all the organisers should be proud of starting an awesome little ethereum community in Brisbane and I will definitely be attending in the future.

If you have an ethereum or steem meetup in your city, I suggest you go and or start your own, it really is a great way to meet people and get more knowledge on this awesome topic!