It was really nice to be back in Bristol for the South-West Show which last happened in 2020 (seems an age ago). The IT Gods smiled on us - the weather was dry, the wifi worked, only issue was the lack of food in the hotel...

There was a definite vibe and lots of positive things. This is what I saw...

RISC OS Developments was the first stand as Richard also had his door duties (acting as doorman and taking the 6 pound entry fee). Richard was also representing Orpheus Internet. The stand also had free sweets and SD cards with RISC OS. The stack/PinBoard 2.0 developer was on hand to answer questions. Lots of details on the stand about Iris as well....
 
ROUGOL had lots of details on upcoming ROUGOL events. The March event is online with an inperson event in April. There is a date for the London Show which ROUGOL organise but the venue is to be confirmed.
 
Southampton RISC OS User Group (SROUG) had a really nice selection of RISC OS based projects running on the stand and details of the group activities.
 
MUG have their regular club activities. After the success of last year's online event, they are running another one online on Saturday 1st July. Pencil into your diary now.
 
AmCog games were showing off the new car racing game (Anthony is a much better games developer than driver!). 3D Turbo Boost is a really fun 1 or 2 person racing game (full review to follow). There was also the full back catalogue of Amcog games if you have missed out.
 
RISC OS Bits had their existing range of products along with the really exciting new FAST machines and the dock for laptop users.
 
Steve Fryatt had his full suite of software. His time has been spent on updating his Wimp Programming in C and Handling Panes tutorials.
 
Paolo Zaino was showing off his cluster hardware project which allows you to have multiple Pi machines. He is developing software which will allow you to run software across multiple devices, sharing the workload between devices. All details of the hardware and the software will be on his site. LauchPad is just the first step in improving the RISC OS Desktop to match and even exceed what you get on Windows, MacOS and Linux.
 
Soft Rock had their usual range of software, still some of those cute RiscPC mini cases and details of the Bristol RISC OS usergroup. There is a new version of Drop Rock in the works with lots of new levels and challenges.
 
Gareth Lock was showing off his games and utilities (which are all freely available on his website). Quizzics has lots of new questions and features. PollMask will be invaluable to anyone writing their own applications.
 
AMCS had the most noisy stand of the show with the full system up and running for you to see in action.
 
Rob Colman was running a BBC with his graphics card and Raspberry Pi which was allowing the BBC to run Amstrad games.
 
John Norris was demonstrating his software to learn bell-ringing and his wife had her famous jams for sale. As John had said it will probably be his last show, there was big round of thanks lead by Richard Brown. Hopefully we might still see him...
 
R-Comp had its full range of hardware and software including the new PineBook Pro and latest release of PhotoDesk.
 
Chris Hall had all his projects and software on show to demo and buy along with discounted copies of the Impression Manual.
 
Organizer had a minor update for Organizer (2.29c) and still keen to hear your ideas for new features.
 
Drag 'N Drop had the latest release of the magazine. Some new books are in the works...
 
ROOL had their range of merchandise, hardware and software (which now includes SparkFS) and talking about progress towards the release of 5.30
 
There was also a charity stand.
 
You can also read about the talks and see the event in pictures.
 
In summary, it was a very positive and upbeat show with lots to see and buy!