This is a brief review of the latest meetup that I attended in London this week on 08/08/2017 @ Citizen M Hotel, by Tower of London. This was the second meeting for this group. Just for some clarification: this group is called "London Ethereum Meetup" and is a new group. There is a larger Ethereum meetup group in London which is currently the largest in the world and was probably the first in world too (see here: Ethereum London).
The first meeting for this group was just a small social meetup which was fun (the free beer was a big plus), but this second meetup was far more popular. This time round there were two presentations and then socialising for the rest of the evening. The atmosphere was fairly relaxed with a mixed crowd of people who had never attended a blockchain meetup to some folks who have obviously been in the community for a while.
The event on meetup.com can be found here: The Fundamentals of blockchain technologies and Ethereum.
Image credit: Chris Tingley
You can even see me in the front row (not my best :-/ ).
The Fundamentals of blockchain technologies and Ethereum
Myles McDonnell, Development Team Lead at Daemon Solutions
Myles presented an overview of Ethereum and even gave a technical demo of how mining works as well as how to send Ether after mining them (he did the demo on a test network). Myles did a great job on a number of levels: he gave a clear and concise picture of what Ethereum is, he gave a technical demo that worked, and also achieved something that most people don't. That something is that he controlled the pace of talk very well. He didn't rush and get himself caught up in definitions, over-explaining, or just mumble to himself. What is perhaps more impressive was that he apparently only came across Ethereum two weeks ago.
Balance
Richard Burton, Balance
The best description of Balance is captured on their website: "Building a wallet for all the world's currencies together". The aim is to have a single app for managing both cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies. All balances would be displayed in a single interface and you would be able to transact between the different currencies. That's a fairly bold mission but definitely a cool idea. Part of the grand design includes using existing banking APIs in order to facilitate the fiat side of the transactions. The UI design seems slick and the intention is to roll out an app for the 3 major operating systems as well as browser add-ons (if I understood correctly).
Richard is a friendly guy who is enthusiastic about cryptocurrencies and bringing new people into the community.
Find out more:
Richard on Twitter
Balance
Blockchain meetups in London
There are a lot of Blockchain meetups in London. The community is active and I've seen a lot of interesting presentations about future projects. I've also met a lot of cool people too. I think it would be hard to find such a large and active community anywhere else in the world.
The following list is just a small selection of these groups:
- https://www.meetup.com/ethereum/
- https://www.meetup.com/eea-london/
- https://www.meetup.com/London-Ethereum-Meetup/
- https://www.meetup.com/Hyperledger-London/
- https://www.meetup.com/N-O-M-A-N-London/
- https://www.meetup.com/Melon-Meetup/
- https://www.meetup.com/London-Cryptocurrency-and-Blockchain-Beginners/
- https://www.meetup.com/polkadot_london/