Kickstart 1 – UK Amiga Show
So the UK has finally got an Amiga event! Ever since the last World of Amiga show ended, there has been a bit of lack of a big Amiga show in the UK, apart from a few anniversary events and of course loads of User Group meetings, Amiga shows in the UK have been very on and off affair. We seen the rise of Amiga shows in Ireland and Germany, so its about time blighty got it own show.
I went only on the Saturday Day show, the night show had sold out, but also I had early start for work the next day, so probably for the best.
The show was split up between to large rooms, one with the shops, books, magazine and talks. The other room was full of the User Group, a bar and food! There was pretty much any Amiga you can think off on show.
Its always kinda odd going to show on your own, I mean I knew a few people going and got to chat to a few fellow Amiga users and saw a few faces from the North West Amiga group/Yorkshire lot, also all the users groups were quite welcoming, but when your own it’s hard to just breakthrough/strike up conversation sometime especial if your bit of a introvert/shy guy.
Amiga community is a friendly bunch but can be hard when the community really know each other interlock.
That being said I still had a fun time, it nice to just talk Amiga stuff to people to who know what your on about.
I managed to pick up my slightly late copy of Vultures to Vampire Vol 2 book and got it signed by the two writers, David Pleasance and Trevor Dickinson! Which was nice!
But I also bump into Mike Battilana, Head of Cloanto & Amiga, we had a interesting long chat about the state of the Amiga scene and he very fairly listened to my ideas of where the Amiga should go and even went through my “Cloanto should be doing more” Blog, he cleared up a few thing about the who and whats, Cloanto are Separate from Amiga (I kinda knew this) and in the blog I do kind treat them as the one company. Which is a mistake to do so, although when you have the same guy running both companies….. Anyway he was very generous with his time and he gave me Physical copies of Amiga Forever 10 and C64 Forever 10, made a few notes so maybe he will roll with my ideas.
I also spotted a intresting little product from Amigakit, A600GS a prototype/proof of concept mini Arm / Amiberry computer, basically another A500mini type system, I did stop and talk to the dev who basically described it as much. The computer was just a very tiny, think more pi zero size motherboard in a super tiny case with Ethernet, 2*usb c, and one full size usb. I sure more details will come out later, the offical website ( https://www.a600gs.com/ )
Finally I made a be line for Retro EZ who I was really happy to see selling the new bluetooth/RF Tank Mouse that had been made via a kickstarter that I missed out on, I played around with the Tank mouse you got with the A500 mini and did surprise me how holding a classic mouse made me feel like I step back in time, so this was a really nice treat and this will now be the mouse I use now with my Pi400 Amikit system.
I want thank the people who made this event possible and looking forward to attending next years! Keep the party going!
Short Video