The evening will start at 7.30pm downstairs at Copa bar in Reading town centre. Drop by and feel free to heckle me! More details over here http://readinggeeknight.com/2010/04/first-talk-for-reading-geek-nig

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It started off pretty slowly - a nice long lie-in for the first time since we've been here. I didn't mean to, but I rolled over, turned my alarm off, and then went back to sleep for 2 hours (I must have needed it).

This evening was most definitely the highlight of the trip - the World Festival (where they announced all the prize winners), hosted on a purpose-built stage in the shadow of the pyramids. Pretty epic setup all round, really! Well done to the UK teams who were still in the running, the games dev team came home with an excellent third, and the short film guys actually won it! They'll be getting Paramount's worldwide distribution network on which to share the film they made, so that is pretty cool for them (hopefully pics will follow soon).

Tomorrow is our last day in Egypt - we're going to check out and visit the Cairo museum in the morning, then head off to the airport for the flight home.

Thanks so much to all of the Microsoft and Egyptian team out here - there are so so many to mention, but I will make sure a few get in; everyone responsible for organising the trips, hotels, bookings, and all that general admin stuff that made the whole thing possible; the Microsoft UK guys, Paolo Ed and Andy - legends! We mustn't forget the competitors, who were such fun to be around despite the high stress for the first few days and who did their country proud; and finally to the Egyptians who made our stay so comfortable and welcoming, especially Evronia, Nada and the rest of the Egyptian MSPs who bailed me out on more than one occasion and were great fun to be with! Hopefully see you all soon. 

First of all we started very very early (7.30 is early, right?) to head off to the sphinx and pyramids at the Giza plateau. While it was very hot (nice and warm, as I said), it was a great experience, and I have lots of photos to stitch together into big panoramas when I get home to a machine with somewhere near enough RAM to manage all the pixels.

Here's a sneak peek though -

The afternoon was spent in the pool (oh dear!), and in the evening we went to some beautiful gardens on a hill above Cairo to have dinner, and where I took many more pictures again, with hopefully a 360 panorama of Cairo to stitch together too! (This one may take some time)

Today the plan of action is there is a showcase 1-3pm, and we're heading off for the closing ceremony at 5.30 tonight, where there will be food and all the prizes announced - so good luck to the UK teams! 

Our games team did their final presentation this morning, and I hear it went really well. By the time that was over, everyone was finished and we hit the pool for a few hours! Dinner was an interesting and seemingly egyptian concoction, but I needed to eat. None the less some of it was quite tasty.

Today I managed to take no photos or video, hopefully that will be rectified with a visit to the pyramids tomorrow. 

First off I was videoing the presentation by the UK game design team, which went really rather well. The demo gods were mostly on their side, with only small hiccup when an instance of their game crashed, but other than that it all went well and they dealed with the questions posed by the panel and others in the room very well.

Unfortunately as a result of all these presentations, I missed the "doll's house" presentation by the embedded team, which I would have liked to have seen, but that was all made up for later on when Ray Ozzie (who presented at the opening ceremony yesterday - http://microsoftontheissues.com/cs/blogs/mscorp/archive/2009/07/03/insp ) was doing the rounds in the Showcase (where all the embedded, games dev and software dev teams have demos of their stuff running in little booths) and we managed to persuade his aides to let him come and speak to them. He seemed very interested in what they were doing with the house, and had a good look around the entire thing before giving it a bit of a try out.

Happening for the rest of the day is the main software dev presentation, which I hope to capture in glorious high definition video, which may end up running quite late into the night (they're already quite delayed!). 

I guess any blog post about travelling would be nothing without a mention of the journey, which was painless other than a small hiccup at customs (which I won't go into) and the Cairo traffic (which I will).

One of the first things you notice about Cairo is the differene in living means, posessions, and general quality of life between the "have's" and the "have not's". This was something i was warned about, but could never be quite prepared for.

The first major event was at the Citadel in Cairo. This is a very impressive, "Parthenon"-like structure on the top of the highest point in Cairo. The venue was absolutely spectacular (pics to follow), the food excellent and the speakers good.

Tomorrow will be a busy day as all competition is starting, and I will be covering it with as much media etc. as I can! Hopefully now I have wifi all will be much easier. 

I'm currently sitting on my netbook in a coffee shop above the main floor at Terminal 1, Heathrow - today was an early start, but only because I wanted to get here in time and to overcome any problems. I'm really looking forward to this week - basically doing some media coverage for Microsoft from the event, as I am in a unique position of being both a student at this event and also not competing, so I will have time to get on with pictures and video!

As soon as I can get some wifi at the event, I will be tweeting, blogging, posting pictures and video, and hopefully streaming if the bandwidth allows, so keep up to date at these URLs

 http://redgloo.sse.reading.ac.uk/siu07cja/weblog/

http://twitter.com/chris_alexander

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chris_alexander/

http://www.ustream.tv/mybroadcasts/703496

http://www.youtube.com/thirstyferret 

If you go vote, not only will it shut me up asking for you to vote, but also I will share out some top freebies I have here!

Vote for Huddle in the best Enterprise and Business to Business category - http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/06/24/the-europas-best-enterprise-b2b-startup-emea/

Vote for Huddle in the Best Startup Founders category - http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/06/24/the-europas-best-startup-founders/

Thanks!