Sam Collins's Page

Looking back at my last post, it was mid January when I said Tech Meetup Glasgow is nearly ready. Let's call that a personal definition of "nearly" then. I'd also like to introduce you to my personal definition of "plenty of notice". It's on next Wednesday.

This isn't ever a big serious, totally planned out event anyway so it's perfectly on track. This is a informal get together of techies, industry geeks, creative types, some business acumen, a projector and a bunch of pizza and beer.… Continue

It’s becoming apparent that Tech Meetup Edinburgh is really doing some good. About 80 techies are coming along each month – we’re all learning more about tech, the tech projects going on around us, and who’s involved.

I wrote here several months ago about the Tech Meetup in Edinburgh. The videos and blogs are on the site, which is currently in public alpha (because it would be just too sincere to wait for a beta). If you want to check out what we’ve been up to, follow the slightly… Continue

All too often I hear about ideas where the success of the project lies in having a large number of users – the usual “and then with all these users it works amazingly like this and that and opens up the potential for so and so”. This is the point where in mid-conversation I frown; I’m not listening to the potential, I’m listening to the mechanisms that get it to the point of providing this potential.

This is really a simple thing: a huge following of people can pretty much make an… Continue

Last summer, I spent a few months in London and once happened to go along to a small event for techies called the "Hacker Meetup". It was hosted by Ian Hogarth from Songkick (a London based startup) at their office. A bunch of tech startups and freelance developers came along and chatted, demo'd their projects and then we went for dinner. While this sounds very simple, I was amazed at how productive this time was – I made some really good connections and found everyone around me doing the… Continue