Welcome dear reader to another blog entry by yours truly Nick Belhomme.

Internet made the world smaller and it keeps making it smaller.
Our ancestors needed to backpack when they wanted to visit the village 20 kilometers up the road. Then planes, trains and automobiles came making us much more mobile. But how fast we could travel the world, we could not easily connect with the same minded. Those spirits whom are driven by the same passion for programming.

I remember being a soul apart at school, because I spent all my time behind a computer. I never really found think-a-likes. Then Internet came into my life and with that… forums. Another breakthrough in human bonding…

With web 2.0 another path is explored: Meetups.

Services like Meetup provide you with a service not to only write and discuss things on the internet, but to actually meet face to face. As this thought may be frightening, I can guarantee you the atmosphere at such a meeting is great.

Let me tell you about the latest meetup I attented: the MySQL UserGroup meetup.
The professional presentation of MySQL by Geert JM Vanderkelen made the meetup worth while but it even became better. After the presentation people started to introduce themselves and everybody was discussing and joking over a drink. The result is 7 new contacts and maybe friends for life…

I hope I’ll see you at the next MySQL meetup. And if MySQL isn’t your thing start browsing Meetup and maybe you’ll find some other “meetup” of interest.

Sunny greetings from Belgium,
Nick Belhomme