Met some amazing people tonight, truly remarkable evening! – Kristine

When we started BuzzConf, we knew it wasn’t just about the conference. We wanted more than the standard fare of presenters and lecterns. In creating the world’s first technology festival, we wanted to help foster a community of like-minded individuals and families around the topic of the future of technology and innovation.

The resounding success of the festival, and the participants’ desire for more interactions like this lead us to run a number of smaller events throughout the year, starting with the BBQ social last month, and the first BuzzConf Nights event yesterday. And we’re so happy and proud to hear the feedback continues to show these events are very well received; perhaps even sorely needed.

Last night was our first technical event of the year, and wasn’t without its technical hitches. Thanks to Andy Kitchen’s impromptu stand-up routine, and the quick thinking of a number of helpers, they were sorted in short order, and the evening’s presentations and entertainment were a hit.

Interesting topics and a friendly group of people. Looking forward to another one – Nick P.

We started off the evening with Andy Kitchen’s introduction to Meta-quines. Minds boggled as Andy gave a live demonstration of code that, when run, would generate new code.

A programmatic equivalent of a pun, poem, or play-on words, creating these self-modifying programs are a a great way to challenge and grow as a developer, but you’ll be glad to know that they’re not going to take of the world and become the Skynet.

Cameron Leeson took the stage next, to talk about the Maker revolution. Maker spaces have been on a sharp incline in the past decade, and Cameron’s experience in starting Brunswick’s Make-Create space has given him an insight in to how the future, and even present-day innovation has changed. No longer in the hands of large organisations with big budgets, anyone with an idea can now find a space with both the tools required to prototype a physical product, and the skills, experience, and encouragement of a community that thrives on enabling “making” at this level.

And rounding up the evening’s presentations, Stefan Pernar shared the story of his immersive technology company, Virtual Reality Ventures, and how creating a compelling VR experience is about story telling. Some of the evening’s participants also enjoyed playing with the Samsung Gear VR headset.

And of course a BuzzConf event wouldn’t be right without some live music. We’re very grateful to Alpha Loopy for entertaining the crowd! Her visually intriguing looping gear solicited quite a few questions about her setup, including some from BuzzConf co-founder Rick Giner.

We’d like to extend a huge thank you to all three presenters and Alpha Loopy for helping make our first BuzzConf Nights event a success, and look forward to seeing them, you, and others, at our next event.

If you missed it, or want a recap, we’ll be posting the video on our social media channels, so keep tuned by following us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and by joining our mailing list today.