A Boat, a Forest and a Cupcake – The Day Off at Summer of Code 2014

Posted on by RGSoC Team

Categories: blog and news

On August 28th, 2014, after almost two months of full-time coding, we recommended to our students that they take a day off. It was a wonderful opportunity for everyone to get their minds off gems, classes, and variables, to take a breath and recharge. Here’s some of the stuff that happened that day.

In Berlin, the lovely people from Applift wanted to do more than sponsoring RGSoC. So they came up with the crazy idea of doing a houseboat trip, since their CEO had just bought himself one. Of course, we immediately jumped on board (pun intended, ba-dum-tsssssh!) the idea to take out the Berlin teams for a spin around Tegeler See. With the weather being on its best behaviour that day, we enjoyed ourselves with food, drinks, talks and gazing across the water. Initially, we planned to have a lightning talk about depression & burn out and a big group discussion about how to handle stress at work and for everybody to share their coping mechanisms. But we immediately felt so relaxed on the boat, that we decided to really take the day off. Also for us organizers. So we hung around, talked a bit with everyone and shared a very relaxing day, which was so wonderfully planned. A big thanks goes to Sarah, Peter, Linda and Therese from the HitFox Group and Norbert, the skipper, for making this a beautiful day to remember.

boat-tour-collage (Pictures by Therese)

Over in Bogotá, Paola from Team ARIA had a little chat with the geese at a farm while her pair, Melipao, hopefully had a day that was just as relaxing - in spite of the weather not looking too promising in Barraquilla, by the Caribbean Sea.

In Vienna, our organizers Floor and Laura gave up on trying to find a house boat to celebrate the day off, and put their baking skills to good use for a cupcake feast instead. Proof below!

Meanwhile in Warsaw, Team Species+’s Magdalena went for a walk in the forest and Karolina spend the whole day reading (we know what you’re thinking, but no: no coding related literature was involved). Apparently, the day off has come just at the right time for them: “Yes, it was really necessary day. Now we feel as if we have more room in our brains…”

And to all the other students: We hope all of you had a wonderful day, too! <3