Wish RISC OS a happy 35th with ROUGOL

The Acorn Archimedes range was launched in June, 1987, which means RISC OS – with its original name of Arthur – also saw its first release, making it thirty five years old this month. With that in mind, this month’s RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) meeting will be a celebration of the operating system’s new legal status as old enough to realise it’s closing in on 40, and therefore officially very old.

Journalist Liam Proven will host the evening’s celebration, and will mark the event by chatting with some special guests from the original RISC OS development team, looking back at the excitement (or perhaps stress) of the time, with the need to develop an operating system to be shipped on the new hardware, and at how things have evolved in the three and a half decades since.

The meeting will take place on Monday, 20th June as a hybrid event, with some people attending in person, and others online via the Zoom video conferencing software. It will commence at 7:45pm.

Attending in person

If you are able to come along to the physical meeting, you need to head for:

The Duke of Sussex,
23 Baylis Road,
London,
SE1 7AY.

The pub is easy to reach by public transport, being situated just a short walk from Waterloo Station, which is on a number of lines. For drivers, there is car parking available outside on Coral Street from 6:30pm – but note that to get to these spaces, you need to take Pearman Street off of Waterloo Road.

Once there, head upstairs to the Chichester Room. There should be ROUGOL members on hand from around 6:30pm, allowing you plenty of time for a chat before the meeting begins – and to browse the menu for a bite to eat to help wash down whatever you’re drinking.

If possible, attending in person is recommended – it’s free of charge (other than anything you choose to spend on food and drink) and it helps keep (or at this point get) the numbers (back) up to a healthy level, which in turn helps ensure the availability of a free room in which to hold the meetings, because people turning up translates as sales for the pub.

Attending online

If you’re only or preferred option is to join in online, you’ll need a computer or other device capable of running the Zoom software – which means most mainstream computer or mobile platforms.

You’ll also need the credentials to sign in to the meeting, which remain the same if you’ve joined any other recent ROUGOL meetings online. If you don’t already have them, though, get in touch with the group, and you’ll receive the necessary information in an email.

You’ll be able to join the online meeting from around 7:30pm, but you may want to prepare earlier – after all, this method means you can’t just browse a menu and order food to be delivered to your table. Instead, you’ll have to sort out your own food.

It’s still free to join, though, so there is that.

London Show banner

ROUGOL of course organises the annual London Show, which should be in your diaries for 29th October, 2022. However, don’t pencil in its location just yet, because the usual venue is apparently going to be closed until next April. The group is currently on the look out for somewhere else to hold it – so keep your eyes peeled for more information on that when it becomes available. And you could even keep your eyes peeled for a suitable venue if you’re in the right part of the country!

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