Like every month of July, my group of friends and I gather for four days at the Euskal Encounter to discuss the evolution of computing. Most of us will not see each other physically until the next year. We have all grown with a shared passion for computers and the unbounded creativity that can be unleashed with them, ready to be shaped by any of us. At the tip of our fingers.

Today, we are senior professionals in diverse areas of computer science: Software development, Security, Systems administration, 3D modelling, Hardware integration, devops, financial systems… each with our separate areas of interest and expertise. In our youth we were amazed by our sinclair spectrum, commodore or amiga computers. We saw the birth of videogames and the 8-bit videoconsoles. We were early adopters of the Internet. We saw the rise and fall of irc chats and the blogging scene, the dominance of Facebook, the appearance of immersive virtual worlds,the arrival of the Iphone and next gen smartphones, the substitution of sms by Whatsapp, the appearance of Skype, Paypal, Airbnb, Blablacar, Wallapop, Uber, Facetime, SpaceX, Tesla…

We have been born in the steep curve of technological advance, where change is faster every day thanks to computers which is our home turf. Where we feel we are just a few lines of code away of being the next Steve Jobs. Where we play with the next toy that falls in the reach of our hand with hopes of transforming it in the next breakthrough that will disrupt the world.

Here’s to us. The nerds. Keep Playing.