Before I discuss the evening I should say a word about Hull Digital. It describes itself on the "About" page of its website as Hull and East Yorkshire’s Digital and Technology Community. Apparently it was launched in 2009 and has "an awesome mix of members" who write about:
- Local news, events and happenings in the online world
- Apps and the mobile space
- Clever devices / web-connected devices
- Anything about the web
- Broadband and connectivity
- Home and business computing
- Gadgets
- And many more great topics!.
The group was founded by Jon Moss of theappleofmyi who has apparently organized East Yorkshire's Digital Conference in 2009 with an impressive line up of speakers. Members of Hull Digital keep in touch through a Meetup Group. In addition the developers meetups Hull Digital holds regular "techy breakfasts" at the Fudge. The next one for anyone who may be interested will be on 25 May 2012.
I heard two good presentations last week.
- Marc Towler, a freelance PHP developer, whose presentation "Open Source, the way forward?" was an excellent introduction and overview of open source software; and
- Adam Jennison, who is not actually a black and white cat but a systems administrator, developer and systems integrator for Hull City Council. Adam's talk was entitled "Restful APIs" and discussed how the local authority intends to make some of its data available to local developers.
Both talks were very interesting and though I am not a developer I look forward to returning for more.
