SOCO in The Vista - 823 Gervais Street, suite 220 (above Jason's Deli) Two World-Class Speakers, Free Food and Drinks, Tech Swag and Networking Open Source South Carolina will feature some of the top open source/open tech/open web technologists and decision makers in the U.S. discussing the most important topics in open source. In addition, food and drinks will be served and very cool tech swag will be available. The inaugural meeting will take place Tuesday, January 24 starting at 6:00 pm and will run until 8:00 pm EST. Location is SOCO in Columbia's Vista - 823 Gervais Street, suite 220 (above Jason's Deli) For more information and to reserve a spot go to Meetup here . Topics and speakers will include: Topic #1 - From App Developer to Open Source Developer Speaker: Chris Mancini, Software Engineer, Basho Technologies Summary: In the last few years, companies like Twitter, Facebook and Google have released software libraries and frameworks that they use internally to the open source community; we have witnessed Oracle buying up open source projects like MySQL; and though pigs still don't fly, Microsoft released .NET with open source licensing and partnered with RedHat to offer RHEL on Azure. The future of software is open source, which means that the best jobs will be on open source projects. What does that mean? How is being an app developer different from being an open source software developer? How do you make the transition to being paid to work on open source projects? These are all questions I look to answer in this presentation and open discussion on what makes a great OSS developer. Topic #2: Bitcoin and Blockchain 101: Fundamentals and Misconceptions Speaker: Michael Tidwell, Software Developer @ Liaison Technologies, Founder ATL Blockchain meetup Summary: You can’t talk about blockchain without mentioning Bitcoin. The Proof of Work (PoW) consensus algorithm was made popular by Bitcoin and has proven to be successful thus far in securing the Bitcoin Blockchain. This innovation has paved the way for many exciting opportunities with p2p systems, and can fundamentally change many industries. This talk will cover past events and culture, acquiring and spending Bitcoin, high level blockchain fundamentals with PoW, compromising the network with an unlimited budget, types of Blockchains, and use cases in industry. Come learn about the Blockchain space and be part of the decentralized digital revolution.