Codebits 2010

Just arrived from Codebits 2010. By far the best technology event/contest/conference/meeting/etc in Portugal.

This year i submited no project, due to a logistic problem regarding (lack of) rocket propellant. Anyway, this is a project to be pursued outside Codebits, as it is just plain fun.

I attended several talks (unfortunately is impossible to attend all), but i must highlight Spacebits by Celso Martinho – 100% pure fun, Inovation u r doin it wrong by Mario Valente – food for tougth, and Everything OAuth by Bruno Pedro – made this subject clear as water. Also, attended the soldering workshop by the Lisbon AltLab folks, made a pair of reciprocate blinking leds, with some really lame soldering (come on, no soldering experience at all). Got me a tv pong kit to try to assemble next weeks and improve my soldering skills.

For sure i couldn’t miss the Quizz Show, its too much fun. This year it was the old guys (João Pedro Gonçalves and Celso) who kicked all the competition, and showed off their geek culture.

The final stage of Codebits was also really interesting, the teams project presentation, the overall projects quality was really good, as allways some guys/apps freeze while up on stage (been there, done that) which is cruel regarding the hard work, but is always funny for the audience. Overall must agree with the selected winners, maybe except the guys that presented a earthquake data collection project, only because i didn’t actually see any prototype working just an idea presentation (a very good ideia by the way).

Thinkered a lot with node.js and socket.io (Javascript continues to build up) and eated lots off pizza, m&ms and burguers… i also took home some books, photos and videos:

For me, the only (minor) glitch in Codebits, was the very low light environment, that sometimes made difficult to work on the laptop, maybe they were just promoting Apple backlit keyboards…

Note to myself: next laptop must have a backlit keyboard

Anyway, its just plain amazing how you can compress in 3 days so much learning and fun at the same time. Ear (and sometimes talk back to) so much talented and diversified people (from CEOs to students) . Still can’t understand how some friends and colleagues couldn’t care less about Codebits.

And the cherry in top, is that its all free. Thank you SAPO, see you next year.

ps – also lost somewhere between home and Codebits, my Saturn v 10$ model that bought at KSC, really not a big deal but had some sentimental value