First ever Colombo Code Camp

The first ever Colombo Code Camp was successfully worked off in Colombo recently. The event brought together some of the best IT geeks in Sri Lanka in a highly interactive and informative programme facilitated by Ragnar Harper, one of the world’s most renowned architects on Microsoft based technologies.

Colombo Code Camp (CCC - www.colombocodecamp.com) is an independent community of software developers, driven to improve competency of Sri Lankan software developers. Founded by dedicated professionals of the local IT industry, CCC is focused on improving technology competencies of Sri Lankan developers.

CCC reached out to IT professionals through social media such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn - which is the world’s largest professional network with over 100 million members. In what can be considered a major achievement by the organizers, the CCC was ranked by LinkedIn as the most popular conference worldwide in its debut event with nearly 400 IT geeks showing their interest in attending the event. Out of this, 50 of the best IT geeks were selected to participate at the event free of charge while more than 300 others watched the live streaming of the programme via internet.

The theme of the event was “User Interaction Tools for Next Generation Software” and during the programme Ragnar presented state-of-the-art technologies such as HTML5, Microsoft Kinect, Microsoft Surface and discussed how new technologies can be used to enhance the life of individuals and to bring people closer to each other even though they maybe thousands of miles apart geographically.

For the last 15 years, Ragnar has been focusing on Enterprise Architecture and has helped some of Europe’s largest corporations to deliver enterprise solutions to their markets. “When I learnt that Colombo Code Camp was going to happen, I was really excited. This would become my first trip to Sri Lanka, even though I have worked with people from Sri Lanka in projects for years...” said Ragnar. “I am a huge believer of communities and how communities can make great things happen. For many reasons I think people should be a part of a community. But the important thing is that it just makes you better in every way. Sharing knowledge with other people, will take your own knowledge to a new dimension. So I was really looking forward to being a part of getting Colombo Code Camp to happen for the very first time.”

In addition, Microsoft Sri Lanka, presented a research project submitted for the international ‘Imagine Cup’ competition hosted in New York this year. The event concluded with Ragnar awarding a Kinect XBOX 360 for the overall best contributor as well as competency tokens for the winners of team competitions. After the event, one participant posted on twitter commenting “It is truly an eye opener to change the way we look at the whole thing...” while another posted “Thanks CCC for the great insight in to the future...”

Eurocenter DDC was the main sponsor of the event while Microsoft Sri Lanka and Dialog Telekom were co-sponsors.