Join My Vancouver SMAC Meetup for People in Tech

My team at IBM recently launched SMAC technology meetups in a few large cities across Canada. This catchy acronym stands for Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud.

The gist of it is that these meetups are hubs for developers and technologists who are interested in cool, innovative technologies related to Cloud computing, big data, analytics, mobile, wearable devices, social media, and so on (and of course IBM’s portfolio of relevant products.)

The first events have been very well received, but due to the geographical location of my team (Toronto), the focus thus far has been centered on Eastern Canada (specifically Ontario and Quebec). I, on the other hand, work from Penticton, BC so I happily offered to cover Western Canada starting with Vancouver. Depending on the interest level we receive out west, cities like Calgary and Edmonton may soon follow as well.

If these topics tickle your fancy and you reside in British Columbia (or travel here regularily), please consider joining the Vancouver SMAC meetup.

The first event will be held on June 9th, at 6pm at the Launch Academy. You can RSVP here.

The main topic of this first event will be Codename: BlueMix. IBM describes it as follows:

Codename: BlueMix is an open-standards, cloud-based platform for building, managing and running apps of all types (web, mobile, big data, new smart devices). Capabilities include Java, mobile backend development, application monitoring, as well as capabilities from ecosystem partners and open source — all through an as-a-service model in the cloud.

In practice, it’s a really cool developer playground to build and deploy apps in the Cloud with innovative components that are both IBM products/services such as BLU Acceleration and third parties such as Node.js, Redis, RabbitMQ, Twilio, and Square to name a few. If you played with Heroku before, the idea behind this platform shouldn’t feel alien to you.

During our first meetup, we will give you an overview and demo of this cool technology that’s currently available in beta. Fear not though, we’re not about to try and sell you anything. This isn’t a timeshare presentation afterall. 🙂

In fact, we want these events to become an opportunity to network and show and tell what the local community has been up to in the SMAC space. (Those who are interested in presenting should get in touch with me for future events.) And if you needed any more incentive to take part in this exciting event, free pizza and pop are also included.

If you’re intrigued, I suggest you join this SMAC meetup here, even if you can’t make it to the first meetup, so as to receive notifications about future events that you might be able to attend.

I really look forward to seeing you there!