San Miguel de La Palma Tech Lovers, the meetup group
As you probably know, I am the organiser of the meetup group San Miguel de La Palma Tech Lovers, a attempt to bring together the local tech community, remote workers located in the island and digital nomads visiting it.
These two last groups are coordinated around two main channels:
- Whatsapp group: La Palma Digital Nomads
- Facebook group: La Palma Digital Nomads and Remote Workers
The meetup group tries to connect participants in those channels with the local tech community by organizing meetups including three main activities:
- Introduction of each one of the participants
- Short talks about:
- Something interesting related with technology happening in the island.
- A project or product a participant is working on that it is worth communicating
- A specific technology that is or might be relevant for the development of the island.
- Gathering in a bar or restaurant to socialize.
The sequence pandemic + volcano killed the emerging remote workers and digital nomads scene in the island. I had a dormant meetup group and decided then to bring it up to life to help in creating some of the energy we had before those two disasters stroked us. A year later, the group have +80 members and two meetups on our back.
We are far from where we want to be and I do not have the energy nor the ambition to lead a big initiative. Co-livings, co-workings…. they are not back. Hopefully somebody local will see the value of bringing together these groups of people and take over the responsibility of leading this group (or any other initiative we can integrate with) so it can move into a next level. My goal right now is to consolidate what we are creating.
La Palma Tech Summer 2024, the second meetup
Yesterday Thursday August 29th the second meetup took place, called La Palma Tech Summer 2024. The agenda was the following:
17:30 Welcome
17:35 Intro of the participants
18:00 Break
18:20 “Yo Alien”, by Lilith Pereda
18:40 “GTC, control system and new developments” by Manuel Huertas from Grantecan
19:55 “Energía Bonita, La Palma’s energy community“, by Nuria Albet
19:10 “Software Heritage, The Alexandria Library of Software“, by Agustin Benito Bethencourt
19:25 Closure
19:30 End
19:45 Gathering on Arepera El Jable.
Lilith Pereda explained the performance she is preparing. She has a solid background in developing activities to promote science. This one will have as goal to bring quantum mechanics to everyone, a great challenge. Her approach is so smart, crazy, talented… everyone who attended got exited about it. We look forward to her first performance.
Manuel is part of the team behind the control systems of Grantecan, currently the biggest telescope on earth, located in the island. This superb piece of engineering is managed by an outstanding multidisciplinary team. Manuel summarised what GranTeCan is, the kind of activities performed there, how they control the telescope and the different scientific equipment and a couple of the latest projects his team is leading, including a robot that will interact with visitors during the guided visits and will have a prominent role in the security of the facilities.
Nuria talked about the initiative she is leading, an energy community in La Palma called Energía Bonita. She described who they are, the activities they are working on, including the research projects, the green energy generation facilities they are creating, etc. and how anyone in the island can join and collaborate. It is a terrific success story and worth following.
I talked about Software Heritage. No one in the audience ever heard of it so I had fun explaining what this organization does, the motivations behind it, how the people in the audience can use the archive and my role as SwH Ambassador.
After the meetup we went to El Jable, a well known venezuelan food restaurant hosted by the González family, good friends of mine. They cook the best cachapas you can eat in the island, in a great atmosphere, surrounded by avocado trees.
Believe me if I tell you that I had to cut hard every single speaker because there were sooooo many questions and comments that each talk could have lasted a hour instead of the 15 min. scheduled. Good sign.
Thanks and next activity
Thank you to our sponsor, Looping BaIT for hosting us, to the speakers for putting time and effort in making the meetup a success and to the participants, for making the experience enjoyable.
Join the meetup group and stay informed of our coming activities. I hope to see you all at La Palma Tech Autumn 2024, our third meetup. The venue and the agenda will be announce a few weeks before the event’s date, which will be December 12th 2024 at 18:00 hours.
toscalix 