As the year closes out, I think we all enjoy reflecting a bit on our achievements and accomplishments the past year brought us. 2017 saw, among a great many other things, the introduction of KC Technology Group. Our trademark-worthy “Meeting of the Minds” sessions have been a forum for gathering and discussing various technology topics, industry trends, and whatever else may be on, well, our minds. 😜 I’ve very much enjoyed getting a chance to be introduced to some of the various projects out there in the wild. It has also been great to hear about topics that everyone is passionate about.
We’re taking a brief respite in January, with our next Meeting of the Minds session targeted for Thursday, February 8th, 2018, so lets look back at 2017 and see what we covered…
2017 Meeting of the Minds
- MotM-1 - First Session! GPIO access methodologies on Raspberry Pi!
- Post not found: motm-2 MotM-2 - Source Control
- Post not found: motm-3 MotM-3 - Static Site Generators
- Post not found: motm-4 MotM-4 - Communication Protocols
- Post not found: motm-5 MotM-5 - Node-RED
- Post not found: motm-6 MotM-6 - Home Assistant
- Post not found: motm-7 MotM-7 - Text Editors, Regular Expressions, and Ignition Community Conference 2017
- Post not found: motm-8 MotM-8 - Hilscher NetPI and Docker
We also began, at Post not found: motm-7 MotM-7, a new intro series called “Pass the Mic”. Kicking off the meeting, everyone gets a chance to briefly mention something that has caught there attention recently. We’ve got some interesting hits so far and are looking forward to continuing this in 2018 with some better capture and follow-up on the website! Let’s take a look at what we’ve covered so far:
2017 Pass the Mic
- Informational Dashboard Design 📱 - (link to Stephen Few’s website here)
- Blockchain Technology and Cryptocurrency 💰
- Sensor Clouds and Wide-Area Radio Networks ☁️
- Wonderware OI Gateway and MQTT Support 🔗
- Windows (Server 2016 and Windows 10) Container Support
I think 2018 will be another exciting year. More and more interesting technologies continue to emerge, even more existine ones continue to mature and see increased popularity. One of the things I love about this group is that we can collectively discover and shed light on more of these fascinating developments that we might not have time for on our own. Join our Slack group (or hop on there if you haven’t been there in a while) and help us lay out some topics to dive in on in 2018! We need volunteers for presentations! You needn’t be the undisputed expert on a given topic–what we’re looking for is some time spent putting together an introduction and demonstration so that we can all discover something new and learn a bit about how to get started.
I also don’t want to close out 2017 without thanking our sponsor, JetBrains. Their generous support has enabled us to share some great tools with our community and add some extra incentive for folks to gather and talk technology! Thank you so much JetBrains for all you do and your wonderful support of KC Tech Group. Let’s give them a hand (👏)and check out some of their great products via the link below!
We’ll plan to see everyone in February–let’s have a great 2018 full of discovery, learning, and community.
Happy Coding. 💻 😎 🖖
–Kevin Collins