This week I'm spending time in Amsterdam and London.
On Sunday I headed across to Geneva airport and checked into a hotel that’s a gentle 10-minute walk from the terminal.
It was the first time I’d stayed there, and I admit I was pleasantly surprised. The atrium was nice and I even had a cheeky sauna before sleeping.
The alarm going off soon after 5am was a bit of a shock, but I felt rested enough. The walk across to the terminal was pleasant, considering the early hour. There weren't yet cars on the roads.
Security was really quick, so I got to the gate in good time.
The flight from Geneva to Schipol is around 65 minutes. Mine was due to leave at 7:15am but had a slight delay. We still arrived basically on time just before 9am.
Arriving was smooth, and at 9:23am I was on the train to the Central Station.
My Airbnb is right across from the conference venue. It’s always a bit of a lottery when you stay in Amsterdam… the flat was nice and spacious, but it’s a) a bit noisy and b) allowed smoking. So the place needed serious airing when I got there.
And the stairs! You can’t see the gradient from this picture, but I’m always stunned at how steep the staircase are in these old Dutch buildings.
I’ve gone past the Beurs van Berlaga many times in the past, but this was my first time inside.
The Dynamo Hackathon preceding DevCon was held in Meet Berlage, a separated but connected space.
I wasn’t there long before the easy Dutch snacks came out. Oh dear.
In between helping a few teams with their problems - some relating to VASA and others to AutoCAD (yes, my AutoCAD knowledge is beyond rusty at this point but hey) - I decided to head over to the former location of the MX3D bridge. For old times’ sake.
In Google Maps the MX3D bridge is still there. It was just 500m from the event venue, so a quick walk.
The new Stoofbrug is nothing like the previous one, of course.At least the old one had corner swirls for people to through their rubbish into.
It's functional enough, but I was surprised to see steps at both ends: I'd understood that one of the complaints about the MX3D bridge was that it had steps on one side. Hmm.
Adam Nagy was kind enough to keep me company on the walk. It's always nice seeing him.
Back at the Hackathon, I was mainly helping a team focused on Walkable Cities - something that’s very aligned with my own research interests (which is also why they opted to explore using VASA).
There were 10 teams entered into the Hackathon. The share-out was great - a single-day Hackathon is really tough, but it’s always impressive to see what can be achieved.
Achintya Bhat, a PM on the Dynamop team, did a great job of hosting.
After the awards ceremony I had a few beers and a philosophical chat at the bar with Håvard Vasshaug. He's the only Håvard I know who doesn’t work on the Forma team. (We have several.)
We were joined by Subhransu and Sandip from CCTech.After the Dynamo reception I headed back across to the Wagamama at Central Station for dinner with (mostly) members of the Impact team.
After a very nice meal together we headed back towards our respective accommodations.
It was nearly 10pm but still light out.
That was it for my first day at this year’s DevCon. On Day 1 I’ll be presenting a session on using WebAssembly with APS (specifically Forma). There’ll be more on the DevCon in the coming posts!