Code Camp Oz and the Waterpolo

This weekend has been full of lots of action and adventure.  After negotiating the Melbourne traffic on Friday afternoon I managed to pick up Phil and make the drive out to Wagga Wagga (only got slightly lost around Albury). One of the best parts of Code Camp is the first evening when everyone has just arrived and ends up at the same restaurant.  Although it took about an hours to get any food it is the perfect opportunity to catch up with what everyone has been doing.

I came to the conclusion that the world is all too small. Two members of the French team that won the 2004 Imagine Cup, Aymeric Gaurat Apelli and Francois Beaussier, now work for Readify.  I remember these guys as their level of innovation set them apart in a competition where every single entry would put most commercial organisations to shame.  It’s great to see that an Australian company is recruiting some of the best up and coming international talent!

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to stay for the entire camp but I was their long enough to see Damian and Paul give their Ajax session, to give my session on Synchronisation (hopefully audio (from the Perth user group) and the slides will be available later this week) and to see Grant’s (who is now an MVP) session on TFS.

Here are just a few shots of Code Camp 2007 (taken with my K-Jam before I flashed it to WM6 WM5 – turns out the image was only WM5 – Doh!):

Fellow Perthite, Stephen Price (I think that’s me in that photo!), made the journey too!

Damian looks on while Paul shows how to use an Updater Panel.

Mitch gets a shot with his JasJar while his Tablet PC sits idle.  

Following another 4.5 hour drive back to Melbourne on Saturday afternoon Meg and I went out to watch the George Coleman, Jr Quartet at Bennett’s Lane Jazz Club.  Truly awesome and I’m so looking forward to the Herbie Hancock concert in Perth later this month.

Yesterday afternoon Meg and I went to the final session of the FINA World Championships to watch the Waterpolo. This was held at the Melbourne Aquatic centre and they had setup more security than most international airports.  We thought they were going to confiscate the coffee we were taking in, but it became apparent that they were looking for more dangerous articles. When the bronze game got started we knew we were in for an entertaining afternoon as Serbia were playing Spain.  While I have a lot of respect for all nations competing, the Serbian fans are nothing short of thugs.  They are the only nation that frequently booed the opposition – talk about poor sportsmanship!

The other interesting thing was that they had setup these flamethrowers (careful Sandi, don’t get too excited) at either end of the pool that would go off whenever a goal was scored.  Even back in the stands you could feel the heat that these things gave off. 

Leave a comment