One day Karaj received an invitation to attend Campus Party Milenio in Granada. It was decided that I go to represent Karaj in this event. I had no idea what to expect… I’ve never heard of campus party before.

Who am I?

My name is Bassam Jalgha, I have been a Karaj resident since the summer of 2011. During my stay in Karaj I have been involved in the development of many electronic projects (Butterfleye, Tork, STF, Emily the beer serving robot, Ijit Ijit sign etc.). For more info about me checkout my blog.

What is Campus Party?

Campus Party event is the largest technology event in the world in the areas of Innovation, Creativity, Science and Digital Entertainment.  For one week, thousands of people get to participate and discover new technologies being invented in different parts of the world. click here for more info.

Felipe, Prince of Asturias during his visit to Campus Party Milenio

What about Campus Party Milenio?

In order to mark the millennium of the Kingdom of Granada, a special Campus Party Millennium edition was held between October 12-16th in the beautiful Andalusian city  of Granada with keynote speakers, experts, and 600 invited participants from 22 countries in the Mediterranean Basin.

So… What happened at Campus Party ? 

Explaining the concept of Campus Party in my own terms: it consists of bringing around 600 influential people in the fields of Science, Innovation (ranging from geeks and modders to developers and researchers) and Social Media, and putting them in the same place  to interact for 3 full days. For a person who has been researching robotics for almost 2 years and who has been involved in technology for ages, i hope you can imagine how I felt…

The event venue consists of a huge campus divided into 3 big pavillions:

- Pavillion 1: Our sleeping location.

We slept in tents during the entire event.

-Pavillion 2:  A huge exhibit place where all the high-tech research and development from all around the Mediterranean were exhibited:

Playing with iCub was one of the peak moments in my trip.. iCub is one of the lead european research projects relating to cognition and artificial intelligence...

.. there is only 20 iCub's in the world built to look like 3 years old toddlers for the purpose to study embodied cognition. I did feel indeed like I was playing with a 3 year old kid.

yes, and he suddenly turns all grumpy on me ! :S

Nao performing their famously elegant synchronized dance

Trying Maxence Parache's Hyper(reality) project (press image for more info)

A flight simulator

- Pavillion 3:  Where all the talks where being held.

The talks were being hosted simultaneously on three stages. The first stage is the social media stage covering the topics of social entrepreneurship, social media, and even extending to arts and music.

I was ecstatic to see that participants from all over the arab world were present (Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon). And knowing that those participants come from a social media and social entrepreneurship backgrounds, it made me proud to see how much emphasis was given to their talks and their presence especially after the Arab spring.  For example, Ismail Chaib talked about social entrepreneurship in Algeria while Rasha Hussein and Ayman Qarout talked about Bazinga project in Palestine.

Rayess Bek from Lebanon gave a very impressive talk about what it means to be an independent artist, as well as a political artist.

Manilla Harizi (Manu) from Albania talking about her photographic quests (click image for more info)

On the second stage, talks where being held covering the topic of science and robotics

The team responsible for the launch of the Millenium Balloon that took photos from 40km up in the atmosphere

BotMeeting, where discussion was held on the current DIY robotics development around the Mediterranean (Emily should have been present)

Stage 3 where talks were being held on the subjects of innovation and technology:

Samer Koussa from Lebanon talking about his Interactive Floor project. (Click on image for more info)

Research done on rehabilitation using virtual reality

Miscellaneous..

The peak of Campus Party for me was meeting David Cuartielles one of the creators of the famous Arduino boards. This guy along with his Arduino friends created a revolution that brought Media Arts and Hardware development to a new level.

From left to right: Samer Koussa, Samer Nakfour, David Cuartielles and Bassam Jalgha

In fact, we took a 6 hours (2 days) workshop with David Cuartielles in which we learned the basics of Arduino, Processing programming, how to control an arduino board from a website, how to send SMS from an arduino board, and how to interface an Adruino board with an Android phone.

Mackram Raydan (founder of Cuevox.com) and Samer Nakfour deep into the Arduino workshop

Only 9 of these GSM shield for Arduino still exist in the world. Samer Koussa and I enjoying our moment with the piece.

Arduino sending SMS to people telling them about the ultimate answer to the ultimate question of the universe

At the end of the workshop, a drawing was made to decide the 10 in between the 20 participants that will receive a free TinkerKit Starter Kit (with an Arduino Mega ADK for Android) as a gift.  The website random.org was used to mix randomly our names (the first 10 will be the winners)

Everybody waiting patiently for the random.org drawing result....

Annnnnnnndddddd … tadaaaaaa

My name was the FIRST on the list!!!! I couldn't believe it, usually I never win!

Me and Samer Koussa, the proud owners of TinkerKit Starter Kit with Arduino ADK for Android!

After the workshop we grabbed David and brought him to Samer Koussa‘s  Interactive floor for a demo. The interactive floor is made with an Arduino board, so we thought that it might catch David’s interest. And it sure did!

One of the most interesting people I met during my trip was Samer Nakfour. Have you heard of lebgeeks.com? one of earliest network/forum of Lebanese Tech enthousiasts. Well Samer created lebgeeks when he was 14 years old! I don’t know about you but at that age I personally used to think  that dial-up was the high-tech of the communication world (not really, but I prove my point).  Here’s a small photoshoot of me and Samer with the flickr colors

Now going back to Pavillion 3 there was lots of modders exhibiting their weird PC designs

yes, this is a PC and not a motorcycle

yes, this is a PC and not a spaceship

Samer playing space invaders

The capsule that was sent 40km in the atmosphere on board of the millenium balloon to capture images of earth

The millenium balloon launch from Jaen (100km from Granada)

Space capsule upon return

And after the geekification, it’s time to partyyy

AlHambra by night

with Vasjen Katro (mybrainart.com) and Manilla Harizi from Albania

left to right top row: Mackram Raydan, Ali Sibai and Samer Nakfour. Bottom row: Visjen Katro, Manilla Harizi, Antoine Skayem, Lynn Kmeid and Bassam Jalgha

And that's how my tent's interior looked eventually

Thank you to all the volunteers of Campus Party for making this a successful event. And thank you Alex for always smiling!