On Wednesday night I went to the technical meeting at Birmingham.pm. The first talk was given by John Pinner. He talked about payTHYME – an open source pay-roll system that Clockwork Software Systems have developed. The thing that interested me most about this system is that it is GPLed and they are planning on making money by selling support. As far as I can remember John said that it has taken them two years to develop. The system is being used by a customer at the minute but there is still more development work to be done as they want it to be certified by the Inland Revenue. I’m not really sure what I think about this business model and would love to know how much money has been put into development to date and how many hours of support they will need to provide to recoup these costs.

The second talk was given by Shevek on protection systems. The talk was well presented but not really my thing. Then Brian gave a presentation on the Fluxx project he is currently working on. This was the first time I had been to a meeting in Birmingham and I really enjoyed myself. After the meeting I was taken to a bar somewhere in Birmingham and then Barbie very kindly left me back to the hotel I was staying in.