I'm back from the 2007 Microsoft Academic Game Days in Computer Science Education. This was certainly the most enjoyable conference I've ever attended. The first morning of the conference was in Orlando; the remainder was aboard a Disney Cruise Ship travelling to the Bahamas and back. I was delivering a paper (one of twenty selected) so Microsoft paid for my airfare and accommodation.

The main focus of the conference was not on the academics but more on convincing the academics on using Microsoft technology in their courses. In particular, they were really pushing the new XNA Framework.

Nonetheless, the conference was a lot of fun. Initially, I was a little worried as I found out that I had to share a room with another conference participant. It actually worked out quite well as my room-mate, Greg Wadley, was an interesting professor from University of Melbourne, and was also delivering a paper.

The great thing about having a conference about a cruise ship is that you could almost always find someone to talk with. In a regular multi-day conference, at the end of the day, everyone disappears (to their hotels, to bars, to parties, to sightsee). But aboard the ship, there weren’t a lot of places for the conference participants to disappear.

At any rate, the ship travelled first to Nassau, where we had two or three hours to explore. The next morning we arrived at Castaway Cay, Disney’s private island in the Bahamas. Unfortunately, most of the academic papers (including my own) were scheduled for this day, so I was only about to spend about three hours enjoying the sea and sun.