What started out as a wild idea a couple years back is now racing into reality. Me and two co founders are starting OWIC! I'd like to write a post explaining what it is all about, and why you, as a developer, should be interested.

How it all started

'Wouldn't it be cool if we were able to start a company where we could do technical sessions before a community that is both large and close? We have the skills, the connections and the passion; there is nothing holding us back!'.

This is what Joris Brauns pitched me a couple of years back. Joris, who recently became an MVP and is an active member of the Windows Insiders community, never gave up on his dream and kept -almost naggingly :)- bringing it up.

We both knew the risks and the huge amounts of work it would take to start something like this. So we postponed, and postponed. Until June, 2016; when we simply decided to go ahead and give it a try!

It is better to try and fail than fail to try, right ?

So we booked the location and suddenly realized: we are in it for realzies!
We reached out to Tom Verbesselt to join us and founded OWIC, the Open Windows Insiders Community. Tom is a lecturer and head of the HBO5 Department at CVO Antwerp (AP University College).

So we started looking for sponsors and partners and launched our website. And now everything is going insanely fast, so fast that it is hard to keep up at times :).

We reached out to Atelier49 and TVis who became our partners, working hard and helping us make our dream become reality. The people working with us are amazing, they do awesome work and we owe them a lot of gratitude!

Both Microsoft and Team4Talent have agreed to be Gold Partners, which is awesome!

So, what are we really?

'What are we aiming to become' might be a better question. What we want to do is fairly simple, give high quality technical sessions and have fun while doing it :).

What we aim to provide our members is a bit more complex:

• We aim to create a real community where everyone knows everyone. We have a few plans how we can make this happen.
• We want to provide an international platform for windows insiders.
• We want things to be fun! We have a couple of activities planned for our first event that we hope will really blow peoples mind. It's going to be amazing!
• We want to provide a high level of expertise. Work together with other user groups and communities, get to know them and work our way to a better experience for everyone.

'Going wild and open source'

Our first event, 'Going wild and open source', will be held in a very exiting location in the port of Antwerp, on September 14th. We will have a 'keynote' mystery guest speaker from Microsoft and a hackathon in the afternoon. Foods and drinks are on us and tickets are free but limited!

I must admit, this is all very new for us. But we are enthusiastic and very passionate to make this new -and not at all scary- thing into something real and awesome! So, if you are able, come to our first event. I promise you will not regret it! Hope to see and meet you there!