About

The South West Amiga Group (SWAG) originally formed in December 1997. They met once a month in Bristol to discuss their favourite computer. The group continued in various forms until 2005 when the group finally disbanded.

SWAG ca. 2003
SWAG ca. 2003 via Wayback Machine

In 2016, riding the wave of renewed interest in the platform, the group was resurrected in a new venue in Swindon with new meets planned for three times a year. We soon realised that the Makerspace in Swindon wasn’t big enough to hold a group that was expanding at a rapid rate, so with a bit of negotiation we settled on a premises outside of Bristol in Chipping Sodbury that could hold just over 100 people and we still use this place to this day.

SWAG’s main focus is to bring people together to embrace not just the original classical, but next generation machines including all Amiga OS variants, MorphOS and AROS. This includes physical, emulated and FPGA based platforms such as the Minimig.

SWAG experimented with ‘Workbench’ Event, after supporting national events like Retro Revival, we decided that we would have a go at doing an event in the village hall at Chipping Sodbury, this was very successful as we attracted people within the industry from all over to our place.

SWAG has now been running for over 8 years in its new form and has now helped other user groups form across the UK, mostly because we were finding that many people were driving all across the UK just to come to us, the success of the Amiga platform is mostly due to the resurgence in the retro scene, nostalgia and with many people returning to the platform, various new experiences (games, graphics, animations, demos etc) are all still widely available and still being created today.

SWAG has been part of many YouTube videos and also has been in the Kickstart Documentary and has supported most of the Amiga related events in the UK.

All are welcome – but remember … Only Amiga Makes it Possible 🙂

SWAG WordPress banner source image copyright Paul Kitching.  Used with permission.

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