December being a very busy period,Startup Grind Mauritius hosted its first event with Jochen kirstatter as speaker. Joki as he often asks 'us' to call him is a pioneer in starting up the software craftmanship community in Mauritius.Back in 2013 where geeks and technology passionates would gather @ local food courts,much had evolved in terms of attendance and participatory levels and now the community has peeked up to 230+ strong.It was in a relaxed mood that Joki shared business insights and how a University student in Chemistry switched to Software development and years after,business is doing good under the Mauritian sun. Much was shared during the one hour which prevailed the fireside chat.Advice to startups & students : Moving out of the comfort zone via internships & Networking events/gatherings prior to graduation.What was interesting is that being involved into two main fields of business : i.cosmetics ii.software development,these would not hinder nor conflict family life as it is a matter of time management and also having a routine which fits in the customer's time-zone. Joki was very supportive to the managing team both before and after the session and a friendly atmosphere prevailed throughout the whole of the event. Kickstarting Mauritius' first developer's conference in April 2015,Joki still hosts both weekly and monthly MSCC gatherings and lately we had the pleasure to be all ears when Olivier Yip Tong,A Mauritian entrepreneur & employee of Mozilla based in Canada,intervened for a session on software devlopment in & out of Mauritius. http://www.meetup.com/MauritiusSoftwareCraftsmanshipCommunity/ http://www.devconmru.org/