Attended another tech meetup last night for SAFE-FS / SAFE Network outreach. Was the Jacksonville IT Server Meetup, which had about 30 attendees from data center startups, backend devs from various companies, and a presenter from Microsoft who was mostly trying to sell people on MS’s new Azure hosted cloud platform.
The 1.5 hour presentation (audio for the whole thing is avail below) was fine. Like I said, it was a Microsoft ex-employee who created a startup that teaches people how to use Azure. It was funny though because throughout the whole thing, he was kind of complaining about how difficult it is to set up servers, how often they get hacked, how many layers of encryption they have to set up etc etc. He also sounded like a white hat hacker who explained many ways to hack into servers and therefore how to secure against it. Very knowledgeable person, just wish he was working with SAFE instead 
Most of his talk just confirmed much of what I’m doing with SAFE to me. He kept talking about JSON-based APIs as the cutting edge for today, which is what SAFE is built on right now, 100%. He said they are much better and simpler (being only keys and values), than what used to be used, like scripts and templates, etc. Yay for SAFE He also said how Microsoft tries to encrypt and “back up” certain things around the globe, but everything just seemed so inferior compared to a totally decentralized internet. I guess I’m kind of jaded / full of my own projects in a way, coming from this 100% decentralized, SAFE Network perspective 
perhaps not a great thing…
The discussions after the talk were the best. I was able to meet 4 local devs here in JAX who were very open to making connections and we exchanged cards and messages on Meetup.com. One was the event organizer, who I introduced myself to and talked about co-organizing SAFE App Competitions with possible cash prizes from MaidSafe Solutions. He was very excited about this possibility and gave me his cell number and we will follow up on this. He organizes many IT events here in Jacksonville.
I also was able to ask a few questions directly to the man who presented, after he was done, about the field in general, and how he felt about totally decentralized networks, even much further decentralized from Azure, where data isn’t held on servers at all and instead shredded into encrypted chunks that are spread around all the computers of the world. Was interesting to see him forced to think out of his usual box, and his answers were very interesting. He said that for anything like that to work, the encryption would have to be totally bulletproof, and he also said governments would (quote:) “NEVER” accept something like this let’s see!!
Great to be back in the USA and getting back on the ground making connections and making more things happen thanks to the great people at MaidSafe Asia and abroad. Let’s make SAFE happen!!
Entire audio recording:
https://soundcloud.com/muzikiii/jax-it-for-safe-fs-outreach
Timestamps for audio:
- first 10 min is intro from Meetup organizer
- 11min mark is where MS Azure presenter starts
- 32:50 is where another server co asks a question
- 38:30 he talks about automating server work with Powershell
- 43min or so in is where he refers to 100% JSON as “cutting edge”
- 54min talks about server costs, $5 per rack etc
- 1hr4min of the recording presenter finishes, meet & greet starts
- 1hr 12min is where I ask him about co-organizing meetups
- 1hr37min is me talking to devs outside, making connections
- 1hr49min we call it a night and say job well done
Pictures:
