Campus Party Diary Day 3

I am actually going to start this day’s events with an addendum to day 2. 

After I had finished my work from the Discussion Panel and Interviews with Sandy Pentland and Luis Ivan Cuendes, I went for a wander around the campus floor to see what the night time is like here.

You can watch for yourself what I saw here

 

Day 3 began much like day 2 with dreary eyes due to late night fire alarms going off in the camp site and then the dawn chorus of low flying 747’s.

Today was going to be much more relaxed than yesterday as we had less to do that was vital and more we could do freeform. 

Paul took his chance to take in a talk about robotics while I went to interview Terence Eden from the O2 Lab about the 3D printer brought in from Slough.  I am looking forward to their attempts to print out a human brain.

Once I finished my interview I stumbled upon a stand that was focused on mental powers and tried my luck on a task of using my concentration to move a ping pong ball up a tube.  At first I was not convinced I was doing anything, but when I relaxed and the ball dropped and then I tried again and it rose, I was convinced I was on the road to becoming a Jedi.

Our first piece of vital work was a KeyNote speech from Vint Cerf who is the Vice President and major public face of Google.  His opening gambit of being honoured that an ‘old fart’ like him can being in front of so many people summed up how he was going to be.

Once I had taken in my lunch I managed to get a chance to test out the Oculus Rift and all I can say about that experience was OMG!!!!! I want one….. I felt like I was really on a roller-coaster and don’t know if I was but imagined my body was swaying from the sensations.

Our evening work was covering a Keynote from David Rowan, who is the Editor of Wired UK.  His talk was about start-ups and entrepreneurs.  Initially I was not expecting to enjoy it too much but get the recording and transcript it for later use.  But by the end I was listening eagerly to what he was saying and he used a few poster quotes from the Facebook and Google offices that had great meaning.

When the Keynote was over, a group of us decided to try out one of the Arenas various restaurants and settled for a Mexican.  We also took along a camera to record us relaxing, and hopefully we caught some good stuff.

However, the night had an unusual twist as I ended up needing a trip to a local A&E due to cutting my finger as I fell over a hidden chain and hitting some broken glass.  I must give special kudos to John who took me to the A&E and brought me back. 

We were so wired when we returned at 2am that we wandered around the campus area capturing the very late night activities on the gaming station and hackathon. 

And once more I have had a very disturbed nights sleep.  I think through this I am displaying the British Bulldog spirit of just getting on with it.