PABCAS, the blog of Paul Martin Campbell

...and I don’t think any of us really realised it at the time.

Using Twitter , Ana Nelson organised what she interchangeably named “Sunday hacking” “Coding brunch” “Ruby hacking” ... The call to action was mainly on the Ireland Ruby Google Group but because of the Twitter publication, we had a few drop ins.

The morning started off with a bunch of us from Ruby group enjoying a really quite good breakfast in New York Grind down by the IFSC: Ana, brothers Eoin and Darragh Curran, Ciaran Lee, Ladislav, Niall Larkin and Dawn ...

After a cosy lunch in one of the booths, the gang of us traipsed over to the window and laptops came out. To be honest, I’ve not seen anything like it since I was inspired at Super Happy Dev House — an entire row of tables and back to back laptops and a gang of people, brought together, spontaneously, voluntarily and all for love and passion for what we were doing.

Between blogging, working on plugins and hacks, chatting about social networking and Twitter, the buzz was that truly undefinable magic that comes out of a bunch of familiar strangers getting together, by choice, to share their space and attention with each other, for fun, for community and most definitely not for any financial gain. I also got a chance to work on a little side project that’s been itching at me for a couple months and got to pair with Ladislav which was cool and I avoided a few typos with his help!

But the magic didn’t end there. Having seen the notices on Twitter. Eoghan McCabe soon arrived and before long was deep in conversation with Niall and Dawn. I was further delighted when Marcus MacInnes arrived and shot the breeze for an hour. I didn’t get to talk to him much, but his presence felt to me that we weren’t just geeking out — we were inadvertently involved in a community hub event. I was upset that Damien Mulley couldn’t make it, but he was eager to get home

There’s been much debate and response and discussion ( and here ) about the fragmentation of the Irish Web 2.0 / internet scene. There’s good things brewing and I know that much of these initiatives will strengthen the potential of the grass roots scene to have a clear ladder upon which to build.

Today, though, was just beauty to the core: Ten geeks with laptops creating a natural buzz, riffing off each other and demonstrating that it’s not always about co-ordination, sponsorship, big bucks glitz glam and the rest—that it’s just about like-minded people with shared interests hanging out, sharing ideas and having a real good time.

I really hope that this event will grow over the coming weeks. It has everything to make it into an extremely valuable grass-roots hub. If you don’t code, if you’ve an interest in anything web, if you’ve a big idea, or a small one. If you want to learn about social networking, if you want to talk to people in Dublin / Ireland who are in to all this web shit and you want to hang out with people who enjoy technology for technology’s sake and the positive impact it can have on all our lives, and moreover if you want a nice good hack in a communal environment, keep a sharp eye out, because something’s bubbling and it tastes delicious.

Follow everyone who was there today on Twitter:

Me, Ana, Eoin, Darragh, Ladislav, Ciaran, Niall, Dawn, Qamir, Marcus and Eoghan ... oh and Dave, Aidan and Chris joined in via IRC.

And of course a final word out to Ana who scouted the location, got the gang together and general made the whole thing happen. She’s definitely one of the pushers