Webtropic

Image by nikan_gr via Flickr

Jason Calacanis urged people gathered to listen him in the last Greek OpenCoffee, to abandon their isolation, form groups of common interests and advance and thrive on cooperation. Half jokingly,  half seriously, he appointed John Nousis, cofounder of the Zuni student social network, as the one responsible for a meetup of people interested in cloud computing and Amazon Web Services.

Well, today we witnessed this ‘joke’  come alive!

Close to 40 people gathered in  the cafeteria of Eleftheroudakis’ bookstore to watch John’s presentation, discuss and network.

I got a positive feeling from the meeting for the following reasons:

• Most people gagthered were IT professionals
• They seemed to have a genuine interest in the subject flared by an unconfessed concern about some project they were running.
• There were lots of ‘new  faces’ which means that this meetup motivated people that we do not usually see in other meetups.
• The subject itself (cloud computing, scaling, need for ‘unlimited’ bandwidth etc) points to projects that do not bear the usual characteristics of  Greek startups: local focus, limited reach etc.

“Now what?” you might ask. I am not sure whether or when there is going to be another meetup, but my suggestion is that it should. And it should have a more concrete form: to train people interested in the basics. Because startups don’t need only computing power that scales, but also people to maintain it.

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Posted in Events | Tagged amazon, Amazon Web Services, Cloud computing, Jason Calacanis, Zuni | 8 Comments

8 Responses

1. on October 30, 2008 at 12:31 am titanas

   Awesomeness!

   
   
2. on October 30, 2008 at 9:38 am Rebel Without a Sauce

   I disagree!

   Let’s arm wrassle for it. >:(

   
   
3. on October 30, 2008 at 10:26 am John Nousis

   I totally agree with your points, escpecially the last remark that we should take this to the next level. I am also very interesting in exchanging ideas regarding where cloud computing could be applied and offer great advantage over traditional technologies.

   
   
4. on October 30, 2008 at 10:47 am Nikos Anagnostou

   @Rebel without a sauce Ok, let’s arm wrestle but If I win you’ll have to explain to what you disagree

   @John Nousis Looking forward to it John!

   
   
5. on October 30, 2008 at 5:59 pm webescape

   Thanks for the article – http://starstylefile.wordpress.com/

   
   
6. on October 30, 2008 at 7:23 pm Sir Pent

   I think you should definitely meet again!

   Sir Pent
   drummer of the Lizards From Afar
   ALL music by the Lizards From Afar available FREE at:
   http://reverbnation.com/lizardsfromafar

   
   
7. on October 30, 2008 at 11:26 pm Nikos Anagnostou

   @Sir Pent Thanks for the comments. I heard some interesting tunes from you. Can I play your songs in a podcast? I did not see licensing info anywhere.

   
   
8. on November 20, 2008 at 1:07 am Sir Pent

   Sorry I haven’t been around to check you out in a while.

   You have our official permission to play whatever song in our catalog whenever you would like.

   If you do, drop us a message over at:
   http://www.lizardsfromafar.com

   We’ll put up a post about it and let all of our friends know to give it a listen!

   Your pal,
   Sir Pent

   
   

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