I headed to the West Midlands in the UK for my first visit to the Fusion meet-up group. I was to be one of four tech speakers in what was to become a packed evening. I spoke on Docker and how to start building Serverless applications with Functions as a Service (FaaS).
@alexellisuk is here @FusionMeetup #dockerselfie #fusionmeetup pic.twitter.com/LwW27f01P1
— Hannah Mitchell (@hannah_fusion) June 29, 2017
The compulsory #DockerSelfie
As part of my demo I was going to show Twitter data based around the event's hash-tag #fusionmeetup - so the organiser Hannah Mitchell helped me launch a mini social-media campaign.
We have @Docker swag for tonight @FusionMeetup 😀 can everyone get tweeting using #Fusionmeetup and @alexellisuk will pick the winner later!! pic.twitter.com/EHsY5XxD5l
— Fusion Meetup (@FusionMeetup) June 29, 2017
The offer of Docker swag was a great catalyst and we actually had over 300 tweets by the time my talk finished.
It was good to meet Hannah - the organiser and her team along with Richard Gee who I'd been working with on Raspberry Pi and FaaS hacks. I also met Luke Hennerley after speaking to him on the Docker Community Slack channel - along with many others.
@alexellisuk super duper @Docker Captain is here!! #Fusionmeetup pic.twitter.com/nYuBqZ6Zyl
— Hannah Mitchell (@hannah_fusion) June 29, 2017
One of the things that I really liked was how many people came up for a chat after the talk finished - you're a very friendly and welcoming crowd.
FaaS is an open-source project and welcomes contributions - whether through a Proof of Concept (PoC), coding features, testing or even just kicking the tyres.
Find out about Serverless functions with FaaS
If you'd like to dig deeper into Serverless FaaS functions powered by Docker read up here.
My deck from the evening is available here:
Wrapping up
It was great to see a growing tech scene in the East Midlands and to hear how companies are adopting containers and Node.js for their vNext applications. A couple of people also mentioned they were working with .NET - Docker supports Windows Containers - so checkout my blog series on Windows Containers.
The Fusion Meetup is always looking for speakers - so get in touch with Hannah on Twitter @hannah_fusion.