1st NixOS meetup in Berlin
A little less then a month ago, after a few ping-pong tweets with fellow Nixers in Berlin, I thought Berlin is ready to be introduced to Nix.
Yesterday (Wed,4.4.2015) we had our first meetup. RhodeCode - company I work for - happily provided us with a space and refreshments to keep us hydrated while listening about Nix.
It was hard to plan a meetup, because of all the unknown factors. Will people be overwhelmed, if we dive into deep Nix topics? Will they be bored, if the talks are not advance enough? Happily my predictions where correct. Many who came, never worked with Nix and came to the meetup to learn more about it.
I gave a short introduction about Nix and its ecosystem titled: First steps with Nix. I tried to show in 20 minutes what Nix is capable of, how to install it, how to play with it and where it truly shines. Main message that I tried to pass forward is that Nix is safe to play with.
Nix is safe to play with. It wont mess up your existing system.
While this is not the only topic, I've talked about, I hope I did a good job of introducing Nix.
I would like to specially thank Johannes Bornhold for stepping up and presenting his 6 month experience with Nix. What stood out for me from his talk was one of his concluding remarks about Nix:
Nix became one and only tool I have to know. More time to focus on a problem.
Since using Nix for some time now I almost forgot how many tools it replaced and this is something I was happy to be reminded of.
What excites me also about our first meetup is the after action. Tweets with #nixos hashtag are slowly but surely filling Berlin's twitter space, Berliners are slowly lurking into #nixos channel on IRC and hopefully next time we'll welcome few more Berliners to the Nix family.
Here are some photos from the meetup and see you all next time, when we'll be having Hands on Nix/NixOS afternoon.