RISC OS User Group Of London
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Welcome to RISC OS User Group Of London |
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ABOUT ROUGOL
ROUGOL is a not-for-profit organisation consisting of Acorn/RISC OS computer users in London and the south-east. Our aim is to bring those users together. There is no membership fee and entry to all meetings is free. To find out more, email us.
MEETINGS
Meetings are held on the third Monday of every month. Most meetings feature a guest speaker, demonstrating the latest hardware or software, giving tutorials of software both new and old, or simply to kick off discussions on the current hot topic. Entrance is free, so why not come along and say hello?
Next meeting -
Monday 15th December 2025 
Acorn Biography - Rob Napier
In a break with tradition, ROUGOL are having a Christmas meeting! However because the pub is always very busy at this time of year, this will be an ONLINE ONLY meeting.
We will be joined by Rob Napier, who will be Zooming in from the little hamlet of Nicholson, 300km east of Melbourne. Forty years ago Rob resigned his Air Force commission to join Barson Computers, who were importing Acorn Atoms at the time. Rob then introduced the BBC Micro to Australia, and wrote the definitive guide to Econet (recently republished, twice!).
More recently, when he's not driving appliances for the local volunteer fire brigade, and doing whatever chores his wife directs him to do, he spends every waking hour researching and writing Voices from a Future Passed, the official biography of Acorn Computers. This will chart the story from the early days of Cambridge Processor Unit through to Acorn's rise and transition to ARM and Element 14, telling the stories through the voices of those who were there.
He has been busy chatting to all his old colleagues including Hermann Hauser, Chris Curry, Andy Hopper, Steve Furber, Sophie Wilson, Chris Turner, Brian Cockburn, Hugo Tyson, and many others. He has got all the behind the scenes gossip and collected hundreds of pages of previously confidential information, some of which he will be sharing with us.
Rob is planning to keep the formal talk quite short and then let the direction of the meeting be guided by what people want to hear more about. Take a look at the list of chapter titles that are in this post on the StarDot forum and have your questions ready.
The manuscript is currently going through final acceptance tests and Rob is
hoping to have it published next year. Watch this space...
Click here for more details
Future Meetings 
15 Dec: Acorn biography, Rob Napier
19 Jan: The multi-headed Chris Hall
16 Feb: TBC
16 Mar: Matt Godbolt (TBC)
If there is a topic you would like to see covered at a future meeting, or (even better!) if there is a
subject you would like to talk about, please contact us.
London Show
The next RISC OS London Show will take place on Saturday 24th October 2026.
Recent Meetings
November: RISC OS Pyromaniac: Evolution, Gerph
October: RISCOSbits pre-show teaser, Andy Marks
September: Book Publishing with Ovation Pro, Gavin Crawford
August: Networking Elite, Mark Moxon
July: New 5tuff, Andrew Rawnsley, R-Comp
June: Everything I did at Acorn, Hugo Tyson
May: ARM 40th Anniversary, Bryan Hogan
April: Drag n Drop, Chris Dewhurst
March: Pre-show fireside chat, Richard Brown, RISC OS Dev
February: Copro copro-cabana, Rob Sprowson
January: T-Wimp, Graeme Shrimpton
Click here for a full index of past meetings, reports etc...
If you see a topic that hasn't been covered for a while that you think
needs revisiting, please let us know.