We start this week by looking back how last week finished fantastically at the University of Abertay, Dundee hosting the Challenge’s very first codeathon.
With Kick Off at 11am, we made our way across to the venue early to make sure everyone was welcomed with a drink and some breakfast, before ushering the hoards into Room 2524 for a quick recap lecture.
Going into Friday we had 60 students signed up so were we even more ecstatic when 70 turned up!
70 students spread across 17 teams ensured that every previous Challenge record was well and truly smashed, so it’s a good job we have double the SERI support this year as Sameer returned to Dundee and brought along his fellow genius Keith Bauwise, who is no stranger to the challenge either, having manned many codeathons on last year’s challenge.
Lee Kenny of Steel Media stayed up with the students until the wee hours, having made sure they were well fueled from 11am til the small hours of Saturday morning, before napping briefly to be fresh for the judging session in the morning.
Our contact and now great friend Iain Donald took over from here to make sure the coding crowd steamed on through to see the sunrise.
Whilst we’ve all been very excited about the new elements of the challenge, we’ve seen that some things never change. Mainly the manner in which students can devour a large stack of pizzas at an astonishing rate.
With so many teams and apps, we knew we would need some help judging who won a share of the £500 codeathon prize, so who better to call upon than the current challenge champions? From team Quartic Llama, Ian Reynolds and Erin Micho kindly took the time out to see what the students had been busy creating and make it easier to come to a decision.
And here they are….
LowGoer Games: Dobble
From left to right: Laurel Gattenby, Jordan Cameron, Hannah Watts and Jonathan Jones
Crash Course Studios
Cameron Shackleton (pictured) plus Mike Love, Dale Robertson and Lyam Walburn
Pixel Blimp
From left to right: Isaac Howie-Brewerton and Aidan Wilson
Naturally, we kept track of the day and night’s events through Facebook and Twitter, so for those of you that were there but were too busy to keep up with social networking duties, or for those other Challenge teams who are yet to be so lucky, check it out.
Finally, a massive ‘thank you’ (again) to Iain Donald for coming back at 1am to help motivate the students through to 11am and generally helping throughout the whole challenge and making it all possible.
