Orange Code Camp

Just got back from this years code camp organized by Orange - very different and interesting event! Take 400 people (mostly from Europe) with one thing in common - a passion for mobile computing, and put them in a somewhat isolated environment but exclusively booked for the event. Then provide facilities for lots of fairly small classroom type sessions (around 30 people) during the day and dedicated areas for coding, playing with new devices, 24 hour bar and food service as well as plenty of recreation activities. Despite the differences of opinion about who has the best technology, the coolest devices and the best software everyone gets on really well! Sure, there is the occasional heated debate about Symbian vs Windows Mobile dev but that just adds to the fun :)

The event is still going on right now (I only had 24 hours at the event this year due to other commitments) and finishes tomorrow. As promised to those that attended here are my slides from yesterday. My second session got a little embarrassing because I had people from MoDaCo and the founder of Symbian come along to see the talk. Right in the middle of my first demo the beta version of VS2005 I'm using blew up big time :( Got it recovered and still managed to finish the demo in record time... phew!

Also got to see the new C600 with the full Orange branding and close to final build: the screen is very nice, QVGA and incredibly crisp.

Picture1: Code camp Pow-Wow area. You can’t quite make it out from this picture but that is a camp fire on stage!

Picture 2: Classroom shot from my first session - that's Ian Thain of Sybase on the front row, no doubt he came along to learn about the superior features of SQL Mobile :)

Picture 3: My second session. Not the absence of smiles on the front row- I will leave you to guess who's who.

Marcus