I headed to the West Midlands in the UK for my first visit to the [Fusion meet-up group](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fusion-meetup-birmingham-june-2017-tickets-35370655583?aff=es2). 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)](https://github.com/alexellis/faas).

@alexellisuk is here @FusionMeetup #dockerselfie #fusionmeetup pic.twitter.com/LwW27f01P1
— Hannah Mitchell (@hannah_fusion) June 29, 2017

> The compulsory [\#DockerSelfie](https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=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](https://twitter.com/rgee0) who I'd been working with on Raspberry Pi and FaaS hacks. I also met [Luke Hennerley](https://twitter.com/LukeHennerley) after speaking to him on the [Docker Community Slack channel](https://dockr.ly/community) - 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](https://github.com/alexellis/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](https://blog.alexellis.io/build-and-deploy-with-faas/). My deck from the evening is available here:

Zero to #Serverless in 60 seconds, anywhere from Alex Ellis

### 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](https://blog.alexellis.io/tag/windows/). The Fusion Meetup is always looking for speakers - so get in touch with Hannah on Twitter [@hannah_fusion](https://twitter.com/hannah_fusion).

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