Codebits IV

And we have survived another Codebits.

The Codebits IV's masco- wait, what?

Again, I was accepted to participate in this unique hacker event in Portugal. This time, my brother who you might know as Strikker around the interwebs was also accepted for the event, and we both took off in an early hour train to Lisboa on the first day of the Codebits. On the train we meet up with friends from Sapo Campus and also @sgtOneill and @dummyreason with who we shared our small lounge later in the Chill Out zone.

Now, I could spend the entire post describing my daily life in Codebits, but my attention span and writing patience have been reduced drastically thanks to my +90 page dissertation and I require more batteries. So I’ll leave you with the highs and lows of the event:

- The event’s theme and design. Very fitting for this kind of event, with the customized mascot cubes marking a presence in every single sign. Kudos to the designer who put a lot of care in the image of this year’s Codebits. And as you can see, the mascot design is subject to many shenanigans and fan art.

- Retro Computing. What a nice trip to memory lane with all those consoles and computers older than me. I got to play again in a Mega Drive and mess up with a couple of ancient Apple computers.

- More food! No more 3-day-all-pizza diets. Ok, we still had pizza, but we also had burgers and salads for a change, which was nice.

- The Twitter screen in the exhibition area. I think I lost %40 of my twitter audience with my sheer abuse of the #codebits2010 hastag followed by spam.

- The talks. As usual, Codebits strives to bring us the best talks about hacking, programming and even design. The one I enjoyed most was Mario Valente’s “Innovation: UR DOIN IT WRONG”.

- Presentation Karaoke. Oh dear fuck.

Sure I could have performed much better on stage. Maybe if I spoke in Portuguese instead of English. And the really sad part is coming up with 1001 witty commentaries for the slides –after- the presentation is over. Either way, we all had a good laugh, it was great and I’ll be on stage again for next year’s Presentation Karaoke. If you let me.

- Soft Kitty song.

First of all, I have a confession: I have never watched Big Bang Theory. My friends from the master degree urged me to watch it, but I never did. But fortunally I caught on quickly to the Soft Kitty song, and I’ll make sure to watch BBT very soon.

- The Chill Out area was cozy.

- Nuclear Tacos. No, I didn’t eat any despite the insistence from @pedrocs who was ready to shove one down my mouth. But watching the reactions from those who ate nuclear tacos was priceless.

- Meo Jogos. I tried it and while it still needs improvements it can become a nice gaming platform, especially for the Portuguese game development area. It’s worth exploring.

- Old folks, new folks. I saw @pedrocs, @vd and @pedroaniceto again this year among other people, also meet @bschildt for the first time (we meet via Twitter since the last Codebits).

Now, there were some low points as well:

- Lack of tables. Maybe the Sala Tejo isn’t as big as I imagined it, but there were not enough tables for 700 attendees. My friends and I had to camp around the Chill Out area and for a while we had no electricity to plug our laptops in. Fortunately, Codebits staff was quick to answer this issue and brought extension cables to the Chill Out zone and more tables. I remained in the Chill Out area but my neck and back still ache for sitting in a bean bag for too long.

- Light and sound issues. I know we geeks like dark environments, but maybe this Codebits was a little too dark even for us. And there were some complaints about the sound isolation and how hard it was to listen to some talks.

- Unless the CEO of an unnamed company is a certified geek and knows more than talking about economy or how entertainment is better than cancer research, do not allow him on stage.

- The delay with the projects presentation. I was unable to see the presentation of the project for which I contributed with graphics due to the train my brother and I had to catch. I missed the final keynote and the prize give-away. Next year I’ll buy tickets for a much later train.

- The project pre-selection. Quite a controversial process, no? I understand there’s no time to show all the projects and there needs to be a selection to get rid of the silly ones, but it’s hard to see those programmers who didn’t sleep all night and missed talks and workshops in order to complete their projects on time. And there were projects which made into the selection and we have no idea –how-.

- The music session.

What the hell was that?

Calling it a “music” session is pointless. More like “Random animals sounds being mutilated with a half naked guy jumping on the screen” session.

Look, I’m all for music experimentalism, but that was not music. That was not experimentalism. That was a group of pseudo-DJs who mixed ancient modem noises with the sounds of a pig being killed and called it “music”. The sounds were high pitched and disturbed those who were pulling an all-nighter and were working on the projects, including me. It was awful enough to make a brave soul in the exhibition area turn on the speakers and blast real music to fight the sound pollution for five minutes. Please don’t ever bring that kind of pseudo artists into Codebits ever again. They belong to other events like OFFF and ExperimentaDesign, not a geek event. If this happens again next year, I’ll personally go to the stage, unplug their cables, and blast Pendulum or Bankai from the speakers. There will be people who won’t like it, but at least it’s real music.

If you can’t find any good music groups or performance for next year, then do the next best thing (like you did this year) and rent the Main stage to the geeks, so we can play our own music or play movies on the screen for those interested.

Unlike last year, I participated in a project with @sdsantos, @fabiopedrosa and @LuRsT who programmed the game “Booomberman”, basically a Bomberman styled game meant to be played in a web browser. I contributed with simple graphics to make their game look nice and clean. We didn’t win anything, but at least I helped with something. Maybe next year (if I get accepted) I will create my own project. Or give a talk. Might reconsider the suggestion of giving a talk about game design.

See you next year.

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