Whether you attended Campus Party Brasil last week because you like videogames or because you simply love technology, because you’re a geek (and proud!) or a businessman, there were some things you definitely must have seen. Do you think Carnival is the only interesting thing happening in Brazil in February? Then wait and read this post, let’s see the 5 greatest thing we could find at Campus Party Brasil 2015!
1. Customized computers
Everyone brought his/her computer to Campus Party Brasil and, although some of them were just that, computers, there were others you could not even believe they were even related to technology. There were lots of them, showing their guts to anyone passing by. But if I had to set a ranking, the first positions would definitely be for this awesome robot, this cute minion from My Despicable Me or (my favourite) this huge Charizard that, together with Pikachu, was the perfect company for some days by your computer. Have you tried and customized yours?
2. Simulators and games
In Campus Party Brasil 2015, many game lovers gathered to play their favourite videogames for 24 hours a day (6,000 of them were actually sleeping there). But not all videogames were online, the most shocking among them were actually simulators. There were racing cars, great racing simulators and dance contests all around.
3. Robot fights
Did you ever think the videogames were the best part? No way! The competition that really caused excitement and expectation was this one, robot fights. The owners of these machines work on them for months prior to these life-or-death encounters. Only one of them can survive, which causes the elation of the shouting audience.
4. Funny hats and costumes
In Campus Party Brasil, people with funny hats and costumes spread like wildfire. You cannot even look at any place and not see one. There were costumes for every taste: characters from video games, from The Game of Thrones, just… this guy with the red costume. We must confess it is one of the best and funniest parts of Campus Party Brazil, what else could you see a dothraki playing programming software?
5. The FIWARE stand
RS 20,000 (7,000 €) was the motto that dominated the top of the FIWARE stand, the same RS 20,000 that were to be given to the best app, developed during Campus Party Brasil, which made the best use of FIWARE. Seven teams participated in the competition, but only one could win. During the time that the teams used to developed, there were different talks and workshops that taught, among other things, how to connect your application to the Internet of Things, how to create a context-aware application or simply how to develop with FIWARE. All those conferences, together with success stories such as the one of FI-Guardian (winners of the Smart City Challenge at Campus Party Brasil 2014) showed the participants of our hackathon how to make the most of their stay in the FIWARE stand.
Did you think that was all? No way! Queues and queues of people waiting in front of the FIWARE stand to get their T-Shirts were the perfect icing of a cake that lasted for five days and that gathered a total amount of 8,000 people that would soon wearing our T-Shirt and sharing their impressions about FIWARE.
The very last day, after all the workshops and the never-ending hours of programming, the jury (formed by FIWARE experts such as Juanjo Hierro, Fermín Galán, Carlos Ralli, Fernando López or Daniel Morán) decided which among the app proposals deserved the prize. The winners finally were FISprinkler, an app that will help control the problem of severe drought happening in Brazil, an altruistic application developed in only five days. The RS 20,000 went there for the deserving Cristina Cho and her team. Soon, we will have more information about their project and their use of FIWARE in the FIWARE blog, so stay tuned!
And last… a picture of the deserving winners.