Where Would You Think

Rob Miles from our department recently presented a session at Microsoft TechEd 2008 in Orlando, Florida. TechEd is a huge affair, attended by developers from all over the world. This year it was special in that it was the last time that Bill Gates would deliver a keynote presentation as Microsoft Chief Executive. Rob's session, on the .NET Micro Framework, was scheduled directly after Bill G, which kind of made the Microsoft Head Honcho Rob's warm-up man.  The session went well, and afterwards Rob was interviewed by Dan Fernadez for Microsoft Channel 9.

You can find the interview here.

The UK Final for the Microsoft Imagine Cup Software Development competition was in London on the 5th of June. Hull Computer Science Department has a very good reputation in this competition. We have had Hull students in every UK final so far, and won the last three.

But not this time. Congratulations go to to Dominic Green from Manchester University and Ben Nunney from Greenwich University who won with their entry “EnviroMatch” which uses a series of games to help to educate young people on environmental issues.

However, the long reach of Hull extends even into the winners for this year. Tom Randell, an ex-Hull graduate and Imagine Cup winner from 2006, was the industrial mentor for the winning team. Tom now works at Content Master and has been giving them the benefits of his experience in perfecting their entry. He will now be going to Paris with the team for the world final.

Rob Miles from Hull will also be going along as a judge for the contest.

Kieran and Kostas came to see us today. They both studied at Hull and now work for Rare. They are part of a series of game company visits that are taking place at the moment as our students show off what they have been doing, with a view to getting into the games business.

Kostas did our game development MSc course some time back. He is famous in the department as the winner of one of our programming events. I took some pictures this afternoon, but I've not got them with me at the moment, so I'll put them up later. Instead, here is a blast form the past, Kostas is the one right at the front looking thoughtful (as well he might..).

Thanks for coming guys, it was good to see you.

Once again there is a Hull posse at GDC 08. Warren is already busy adding new content to his course for next year based on what he saw at one of the sessions that he has been to. If you want to find out more about the world's largest Game Development Conference you can read the reports from Rob's blog, starting here.

One of our ex-students, Steven Yau, has written a nice article for gamecareerguide.com about how to break into video game development. It is well worth a read.