Digibury 2.0

I can't say anything about early editions of Digibury as I am a new digibee (yes, I just made up a word - Oxford English Dictionary here I come!) at attending these lovely gatherings, but I can only appreciate the evolution of the event. I mean - have you seen the new website? I love it when things evolve rapidly and naturally and there is no doubt Digibury has this down to a t. Check it out if you don't believe me!

Last event's structure adopted a slightly different format which allowed members not only to interact with the speakers and ask questions, but to physically play with Arduinos and to create our own light painting artwork! Yeah, that's right, now's the time to pity yourself if you've missed it!

Really grateful to meet Emily Turner from 100and40 which taught me a really valuable lesson - there are no such things as social media experts! What?? Yeah, they are just as bogus as Santa or the Easter Bunny! (Exception being that we like Santa and the Easter Bunny's all right I guess).  I think it is incredibly reassuring to hear that you do not have to be an expert in something when we live in a world where everybody needs to brand themselves, where most people are sceptical in social situations unless they know at the start what their mission is and what they'll get out of it. It's such an immense pressure to label yourself as an expert these days, that just hearing Emily's words lifted a massive weight off my shoulders.

Learning about Arduinos was a lot more fun than expected! I am not qualified to get into the techy part and explain it to you, but they let us program the LEDs which meant that all present were thinking about how we could transpose our new gained skills into creating magical light shows for our Christmas tree...We actually got to create our own personalised message on camera.



This is when I realised I don't know how to spell my own name backwards... (Disappointing. Really disappointing.)

I won't even try to describe how much fun this was, you can check all the cool paintings on the #canthack website. <--- must see for all interested in programming and maybe even DIY one of a kind Christmas lights making?

Amazing evening, had so much fun and a big thank you to Deeson, Simon, #canthack and Emily - for making all this possible, but personally I must mention a massive THANK YOU to Emily, who gave me the courage to put this out for the world to see:

My name is Ioana and I am absolutely positively no expert in anything. I like loads of stuff and enjoy a whole bunch of other stuff, I can go as far as saying that I am good at doing some of the things I do, but I am positively 100 % NO EXPERT at doing anything!!!...not even at eating chocolate unfortunately...and you know what?

That's fine with me. 

Digital Canterbury. Digibury

'There's always something to do in Canterbury'

You know what? I truly believe this to be a 100%, full proof, spot on accurate statement. This is, indubitably, if you know where to look for fun and interesting activities and events...and I do mean this, unfortunately, as you do need to know how to push Google’s buttons, to be able to find some of our lovely and weird, ambiguous and fascinating events that are happening in my little city.

Yes, you definitely need to know where to look for them and in absolutely no way whatsoever, just stumble upon events by chance, decide to attend them and then be absolutely mind blown by the fun you had!

Okay, okay! Hands up, hats off, you've got me! I must admit that in the following paragraphs I may possibly be referring to an event I recently attended and that I have spotted on twitter... I was in fact not looking for anything related to evening activities that might imply in the slightest the existence of the infamous 'life after work' and that, in fact I was just having a minute break from my work and decided to check up what was new in the world of twitter. 

Nonetheless, so what if it was a simple, unplanned, last-minute discovery? I still had to take the decision to attend, didn’t I?  So surely I can at least have a weensy tiny pat on the shoulder for my discovery!

Well, I believe that I was instantly attracted to this particular event as the name itself acted more as a brain stimuli for me, by having an irresistibly interesting and eye-catching name..Digibury.

By having previously expressed my love for the magical city of Canterbury and being absolutely and irrefutably addicted to my digital universe, the name ‘Digibury’ had me mesmerised and completely brainwashed in matter of seconds, involuntarily finding myself asking for more details about the night’s event. What a beautiful synergy…Digibury. Digibury. Digibury....Digital Canterbury.

Digibury's website promotes a monthly event that represents a clear stepping stone to the fascinating world of the ambiguous and futuristic. The scope? For people to meet up to hear other people speak about digital, engineering, hacking and start ups – just to name a few. Sounds pretty interesting, doesn’t it?

On arrival, the crowd at Farmhouse looked more like a friendly gathering involving drinking beer in a relaxed atmosphere rather than in a public house, surrounded by fascinating strangers. However, I hint that the venue did gracefully complement the nature of the event and made it look so comforting.

The first presentation was from Animate & Create (a local animation studio based in Whitstable) and it was so fascinating that it completely made me forget for a second that I did not know a thing about animation!

Streetvite’s founder managed to win the audience over by sharing his business journey, with funny and heart-warming ups and downs about starting his own business. Weirdly enough, I did find myself talking to someone about it and I believe the app to be a real success - just a click on Streetvite and I can find out what’s going on in Canters. Woohoo!

The last speaker of the night, was Al King who showed us how he makes these wooden CD cases which turned out to be so cool that I was thinking about how many I would need to buy to put them together and create unique furniture for my flat? lol

 Absolutely loved the evening! It was so motivational, so inspiring, fun and so different from anything I have attended so far in Canterbury. I definitely recommend you check it out if you are round! If you don’t leave the event feeling inspired by these people…then you must have no soul!

Mwah hah hah!