Blockchain Manchester — Meetup 0: “Genesis”
On October 24th 2017, myself and Andy Gray hosted the first ever Blockchain Manchester meet-up. Hopefully this bi-monthly(ish) meet-up will fuel Blockchain innovation in Manchester.
Both of us initially got interested in Blockchain technology after participating in an Ethereum hack-a-thon back in December 2015 hosted by http://hack.ether.camp/. We came 2nd place with a “payphone” solution on the Blockchain.
The night went as follows. We started off with a broad outline of what a Blockchain is. Presenting at a high level how it works along with some common concepts and features.
We followed up with a talk and demo in which we minted a ERC-20 compliant crypto-token with a smart contract and deployed it to the live Ethereum Blockchain. (See links below for slides and smart contract source)
A total of 51 people attended at MadLab, filling the room with an interested, knowledgable and enthusiastic crowd.
From our perspective the first meet-up was a success, attendance exceeded our expectations, and the crowd was not only enthusiastic about Blockchain but keen for the community in Manchester to grow.
I think the breadth of the emerging Blockchain industry is so vast we are confident there is scope for lots of more meet-ups going forward. After the talk many of the attendees spoke to us about a wide variety of Blockchain topics highlighting it means different things to different people. With Blockchain’s potential yet to be fully realised this is only set to grow further.
One of the overall goals of the meet-up is to help foster a community of like minded Blockchain enthusiasts in the North West while keeping a focus on some of the technical aspects of Blockchain. We plan to cover more real world use cases and hopefully attract some of the bigger names in the Blockchain world to contribute.
We look forward to hosting more meet-ups in the future and engaging more with the Blockchain community. Our plan is to organise another meet-up before the end of the year so watch this space and thanks for attending if you did.
If you attended and enjoyed yourself; feel free to get involved by following our blogs and joining our slack. If you are super-keen, why not volunteer to do a lightning talk on something you are passionate about in the Blockchain world?
Slide decks
ERC-20 token details
- ERC-20 Blockchain Manchester Pioneer token contract on etherscan
- Code on Github
A massive thanks to all who helped organise the event and to EqualExperts for sponsoring food and beers!
