On Monday, when we flew to Madrid, I thought to myself that I would write one blog post for each day, sharing my experience. There was no chance! We woke up early each day to start the day’s activities, finished them late afternoon, and then went out to have dinner guided by the Spanish team, which always stretched out and ended up with everyone partying or talking until late hours of the morning. It was a blast! So now I’ll try to summarise it in one post. Team 3 did a great job describing the days in their blog post, so I’ll try to focus more on my own feelings and experience.

There’s one very intersting thing that I realised when all seminars were over and done with, which is how different each teaching method was. Each was adapted to the particular thing that needed to be tought, and ended up having more or less success. I will try to highlight it for each day.

On Monday the majority of us took an afternoon flight, basically the only direct flight that there was, so we reached our hostels and hotels quite late and we only had time to go there, learn about our rooms and situation, and share a couple of lessons learned from making the box before we had to go to sleep.

Tuesday was the first teaching day, the Spanish team was leading. I didn’t have many hours of sleep on me, but the excitement of this new experience easily kept me going. They structured their day like a regular course or software tutorial, with a brief theory presentation first, followed by an applied exercise, then rinse and repeat for each part of the completed product. It was a challenge to move forward due to the many technical problems, but in retrospective I think that it was the most efficient way to teach something like that. At the end of the day there was a 2 hour competition where we were challenged to make a videogame of our own, and Mei and me had a blast just grabbing the result of the day’s exercises (which was a 2D platforming game) and wildly modifying them until we got a bad-looking flappy bird clone. I think we left with a good feeling and understanding the seminar way more.

In the evening we went to a local bar where we were able to drink some beers and try some local food. We were also able to know the Spanish team better.

Wednesday was our turn to teach. We structured the day more like a hands-on workshop, where we had one box for every 3 students and we were all able to mess with the device and learn its inner workings. Towards the end of the day, many technical problems arose (which will always happen with IoT), and that made all of us work together and try to troubleshoot to reach a functional final product. That teamwork, the research, and all the discussions; that’s the real experience right there, and I’m proud to have lived it.

In the evening we went to a restaurant / bar arcade game themed, where we ate plenty, drank plenty, until we left for a local club. The club was small, themed like a natural cave, played exclusively the profoundly sexualising and irrevocably popular in Madrid music genere “reggaeton”, had a hollow stalagtite that poured panther’s milk from the ceiling onto a glass to make suspicious alcoholic drinks. True story. Regardless of the club, there’s a point where the levels of alcohol in your body are high enough that you have fun no matter what. The company was incredibly good, we got the chance to learn a lot about each other, and I had more fun than I have had in a very, very long time.

Thursday was the Swedes’ turn to teach. They approached it in a more theoretical way, as the subject required it, and to give interaction to that they opened a lot of debate all throughout the presentation. In the afternoon they made it a bit more practical by presenting the concept of the “capture the flag” competitions, where you try to exploit vulnerabilitites in different systems, and we had the opportunity to simulate one such competition.

In the evening we ate three 2-meter pizzas! The place was called “kilometers of pizza”, and they were delicious. We then went to a bar to try sangria, and after that to another bar, smaller and hidden behind a corner of the city, where we were able to play all the classic arcade games we wanted until they closed.

Friday was the visit to the company, one called Indra which seemed to focus on military electronics. Their presentation was unfortunately the worst one of them, with convoluted themes, entire paragraphs of very small text on the slides, and no interaction at all (except for one young speaker who did it really well). After that we toured the company, and that part was way more interesting.

In the evening we had a coffee together in starbucks, separated for a while to look around the city for the first time, then got together again to have dinner in a surprisingly high quality semi-fastfood place called “VIPS”. The spaniards invited two former participants of the seminar, one of them participated four times! Both of them and all the rest were incredibly friendly, and we talked for hours on end; so much so that the closing time of the restaurant came and we didn’t even notice. We then took a stroll around the city and finally went to bed, as we needed to sleep at least a little because we had an early flight the next day.

Sorry for the long post, but it was truly a unique experience. So…

TL;DR: If you have the opportunity to do the seminar, don’t even hesitate. Sign up, go with an open interantional mindset, and you’ll most likely have the time of your life.