Droidcon Conference London 2014
Droidcon London is a 2-day Android conference organised by Skills Matter.
I was a volunteer, so helped set up prior to the event, and in return was given a free ticket to attend both days :)
Sponsors
There was also a wide range of sponsors including Microsoft Azure, Sony, PayPal/ Braintree, Intel, Epson, AppConverter, Amazon App Store, Facebook, Badoo, ooVoo and Google Developers. As well as many other Bronze sponsors. Attendees were free to talk to the sponsors about their software, products and services and ask questions (and get a ton of free t-shirts and stash!).The Presentations
Day 2 saw was filled with talks and presentations given by the worlds leading Android experts. It kicked of at 9 AM with Chet Haase from Google discussing what's new in Android Lollipop. From 10 AM - 17:30 there 7 talks going on simultaneously throughout the day (35 in total). Meaning it was impossible to attend them all, however they were all filmed and made available on the internet later on.
The Party
On Thuresday night, there was a networking session and party at a pup a few minutes down the road at the Wenlock & Essex. There was a free bar paid for by ooVoo, and plenty of food and more stash. The music was picked by the attendees and was GREAT! Setting Up
I volunteered to help set up the event the day before, and early the morning of the first day (it was the only way I could get a ticket, given the crazy high prices!). We arrived on Wednesday and Thursday at 06:30 AM and our time was put to good use packing 1200 goody bags, preparing flyers, folding thirsts and other general setting up jobs.
A few photos
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| Chet Haase - Practicing Practical Best Practices for Software Development Practitioners |
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| Cyril Mottier - Android Wear |
#DroidconUK Tweets
Vitality Oxford Half Marathon 2014
The Oxford half marathon is a 13.1 mile flat run though Oxford city, including Iffley Road, Cowely, the Mini Plant, the River Thames + Canal Path and this year the Iffley running track and a "Banister Mile" which was separately timed.
I tracked my run (as always) with Runtastic, by far my favourite sports tracking app. Below is a link the the session, also the map below is from the same session.
https://www.runtastic.com/en/users/Alicia-Sykes/sport-sessions/331596587
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| the start |
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| A not so great photo of me coming into the finish |
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| Map of the route, tracked using Runtastic |
https://www.runtastic.com/en/users/Alicia-Sykes/sport-sessions/331596587
PayPal Dev BattleHack London 2014
BattleHack is an annual world wide hackathon run by PayPal. This year I was lucky enough to once again get a ticket to the London event, which took place on the weekend of the 11th - 12th October 2014, at Level 39, Canary Wharf. Level 39 as always an amazing venue with a 360 degree panoramic view of London and Canary Wharf.
As with previous years the food was of course really good, and plenty of it, full breakfast, fish and chips for lunch, fare ground style snacks at tea, then hot dogs and PayPal fairy cakes and beer for dinner, and pizza for midnight snack - and that was just Saturdays meals!
The first few hours consisted of networking, opening talks and sponsor pitches. The sponsor talks were really good, and included SendGrid, Twillio, Nango, Relayr, context.io, JustGiving and NFC Ring. There was also an opportunity afterwards to talk to the sponsors and get help and information about using their products (and free t shirts and stickers!).
I was also very happy, since I won a Leap Motion Controller without even having to do that much! Thanks PayPal! It is a pretty cool piece of tech, so I will create a blog post reviewing it a bit later today.
Unfortunately I was unable to stay for the whole weekend (since I was running in a half marathon on Sunday morning) but I spent Saturday hacking into the early hours, and watched the presentations of the other hackers online after the event had finished. Some very cool stuff was created during BattleHack London 2014
:)
First prize included winning an axe! How cool!?
Princes Trust Palace to Palace 2014
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| View from the starting line |
The event was very well organised, with the whole route fully marshalled, optional chip timing, and a free lunch and goodie bag at the end :) We were very lucky with the weather, apart from a cold start, the rest of the day was cool, sunny and clear with dry roads, near perfect cycling conditions.
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| The Accenture Classic Team |
All in all a very fun Sunday raising money for a good cause :)
UKI European Programming Competition - London
UKIEPC is a European programming competition hosted in universities around Europe. This year I attended the event in London at the Imperial College.Teams of up to three contestants were formed before hand, most of whom had done extensive practice sessions. The day started at 9 AM, where we had a welcome talk and quick run down or how everything was going to work. At 10 AM we were given access to the questions on the computer system, there were 15 in total all of varying difficulty. There was a choice of languages to program the solutions in, Java was our teams preference. We then spent the next 5 hours coding our solutions, with a live score bored, and the current leading teams being indicated with balloons tied above their desk (and the large amount of Google stash they won after answering a question correctly).
At 3 PM GMT the competition closed, and the solutions were presented, winners announced and prizes distributed. There were several representatives and recruiters from companies such as Google, PayPall and EF who attended and chatted to the contestants afterwards along with a large amount of Dominos pizza, which never goes down too badly with programmers ;)
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