Oktoberfest

Yesterday we went to Oktoberfest in the centre of Munich. The first thing I noticed was glassy-eyed people staggering out of Theresienwiesen already at 5 o'clock in the early evening. I thought it was funny. Then we went into the Hofbräuhaus beer tent. The tent was massive and it was full of people. Hundreds, if not thousands of people packed into one tent drinking beer was making a huge humming noise when we walked in. Our places were on balcony where we could very well observe the people.

The beer comes as a 'Maß', which is a liter of foamy refreshment. For food we had half-a-chicken each. Hot as anything. Our congress group was also interviewed for the local TV channel München.tv. One of the Japanese guests had/got to sing "Prosit" with the interviewer. It probably went out live and at least today it was broadcast. By the end of the evening I knew where the glassy-eyed people were coming from. And why they were staggering.

Today a Texan speaker had to admit that although they say in Texas that everything's bigger there, it would be hard to imagine anything bigger than Oktoberfest. It is afterall the biggest "Volksfest" (people party) in the world.

The Congress ended today, there are only some excursions left for tomorrow and a farewell breakfast.

I'm still trying to upload some pictures. Somehow it didn't work yet.

A few pictures

Here the Trommelfeuer in action at lunch time:


And here they are in the evening:


Half of the "Hot Sax Group":

World Congress for Software Quality

The second day of the 3rd World Congress for Software Quality is ending. We arrived (Virpi and me) yesterday after 7 hours of driving from Witten in the Ruhr Area to the small suburban city of Garching in Bavaria near Münich.

Yesterday I just registered to the congress and enjoyed an evening of food and 'Pils' (beer) and live guitar music. I met my colleague from Nokia, Julien Courthial and we listened to the presentation by Horst Zuse about the origin of the computer.
In his slideshow, Mr. Zuse stated that his father, Konrad Zuse, is considered to have built the first functional and programmable computer in the world. The historical pictures and videos were very interesting, indeed.

Today was full with half-an-hour presentations with almost no time for questions. It seems that the congress program is a bit too hurried as there is no time between the presentation for changing rooms. I made a few new friends, Joanna and Wojciech from Poland and Jan from Germany. Wojciech will chair a session on Thursday and Jan will have half an hour to hold a presentation titled "Appropriate Processes: Tailoring Agile Processes". Joanna and I tried to collect a list of questions from Jan. Questions, which he wouldn't like to be asked after his presentation. We said that we wouldn't want to ask them accidentally, so it would make sense to keep list so we'd avoid them. He came up with a few questions like "You don't really believe what you are saying, do you?" We'll try to go through the list on Thursday...

A drumming group from Hanover had been invited and they had a show three times today. In the morning they made a loud wake-up call using aluminium ladders. Apparently. I didn't hear that because I slept in this morning. I arrived just in time for the first keynote speech. Then on lunchtime the group, which is called Trommelfeuer (Drum fire), made a racket using kitchen utensils, like kettles, wooden spoons and electric mixers. Their third show was on real drums (and a couple of barrels) at around 18:00 o'clock. It was great fun and very energetic.

They were followed by "Hot Sax Group", I think, I might have misheard the name. I wasn't paying attention. They played several tunes using just brass instruments. Wonderful stuff.

Tomorrow evening, Oktoberfest.

My first ever blog post

I declare the Qualiteers Blog opened.