Back in May of 2018 when I wrote the last post Cork.Net (yes I know, a long time ago) I started an endeavor of starting or restarting a new .net community in Cork.
For a while, I tried to increase my network and call for speakers, a lot changed back in 2018 for me, In August me and my wife had a new baby, Martin, in November I bought a House and in December I was hired to work for Dell EMC, starting in January. I left a company (G2 Speech) that helped me a lot to grow as a person and as a professional and was the first reason why I am in Ireland for the first place.
The new challenge brought new opportunities, and in May 2019, the first cork.net meetup was hosted at Dell EMC, Mahon Cork.
It was a huge milestone for myself, one year later finally the dream materialized.
The Visual Studio 2019 launch, was the driver and we had a screening of the first couple of hours of the event, there was pizza, beverages and of course, loads of swag!
The event was a huge success, there was a huge attendance and overall, I think everyone liked it.
Things went cold for a while, and the lack of time and courage postponed the next meeting.
In October I was contacted by Microsoft Developers Ireland and invited to become part of the Official Azure Tech Communities which brought a new motivation and opportunity to make Cork.Net a reference community in Cork.
The community was rebranded and it's now Cork.net and Azure and we are interested in all things related to .net, azure, and development in a general way, because after all, Azure is platform and language agnostic and whatever you can dream, you can certainly run in azure.
We proudly have as official sponsors Dell Technologies, Jetbrains, RevDebug and of course Microsoft Developer Ireland.
Yesterday I was nominated for an MVP award, words can't fairly describe what I felt since I remember I always dreamt about becoming a Microsoft Most Valued Professional and I'm committed to share my knowledge, a mentor in whatever way I can, help and inspire others to do the same.
Today I got a #azurehero community hero badge another milestone and the recognition that what I'm doing matters and is making the difference.
At this moment, the Cork.Net and Azure community counts with 115 members and is growing every week, we meet on the last Tuesday of "every" two months, join us to know more, attend one of our meetings (or more preferably) do your talk and inspire others, be the change you expect to see in the world.
We have Pizza, beverages swag and Jetbrains and RevDeBug licences to raffle on every event, and more...
Stay tuned...