Cornwall Geeks is 3!

Woah! It’s not felt like three years but here we are. I’d like to take the time to share a little of where I think we’ve come from and where we’re going.

How things began

Working with fffunction, I had been to Bristol and experienced the great web/tech community up there. I wondered if anything existed back home. The groups I could find either seemed defunct or focussed on the business or social media. I put the question to twitter and people had similar feelings.

Pretty soon we had a handful of people around a table on a summers evening, having drinks, and talking about what they do. It was good fun and began to be a regular occurrence.

A few months later I was invited to a new Slack group: Falmouth Geeks. Since I was joining from Truro it became Cornwall Geeks. As it was a similar group of people with the same goals the meetup changed to share the name not long after.

The slack channel started as a separate venture — Falmouth Geeks

How things have changed

In the years since we’ve seen an explosion in the tech community in Cornwall. Software Cornwall, Kernow DAT, and Headforwards in particular have been pushing the bar for events and community outreach. The best display of this is the tremendous growth show for the region in the Tech Nation Reports for the last couple years.

Luckily, when someone asks if there’s any meetups going on in Cornwall the answer isn’t “Try Plymouth” anymore. (That’s not to say don’t go to Plymouth. Do. They’re doing amazing things.)

Where things are going

I’m happy to say the community (in way of the Slack channel) is self sustaining now. I can spend days not checking in but there’s still people having conversations, sharing, and helping each other out. The meetup is also doing well; to the point where people are expecting it and let us know when I forget to set one up.

Finally, I’d like to thank all the people who were there in the beginning and made the Cornwall Geeks community what it is today: Natalia, Iain, Dave, Glen, Robin, Matt, Damien, Tom, and Martin.

A big shout out to Belinda and Lyssa for their work with Software Cornwall. Tony for his work on Kernow DAT and Future Sync. Our friends up north working on Digital Plymouth.

I’m not going to lie and say I enjoy the organisation and admin aspects. I really only do what little I do so I have a community to be a part of. I didn’t do it alone though; Natalia has always been there behind the scenes arranging projectors and speakers, setting up meetups and booking rooms. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve started and hope it keeps on growing.

If you want to get involved with Cornwall Geeks you can:

We’re always looking for collaborators and contributors who want to give talks or show’n’tells at the meetup, help out with our new website, or sponsor an event.

Here’s to another 3 years! 🎉