Like a traveling salesman making his rounds, Pech-app Cake-cha rolled back into Cogapp town this week. Hot on the heels of last month's successful Cake Thursday/Pecha Kucha hybrid, we once again sat down in out seats, picked up our forks, opened our ears and readied ourselves for 2400 seconds of joy!

First up to the stand this time around was resident User Experience Consultant Cathy. Giving a presentation on the CERN Common Control Centre and some work she conducted there before she joined Cogapp, Cathy's talk taught us all a little about physics, a lot about user-centred environmental design, some things about Switzerland and a huge amount about how captivating an audience can make them completely forget about the cake in front of them.

In Cathy's wake came the illustrious Martin Edwards, Front End Web Developer and Hong Kong knowledge fountain. His talk, about his recent trip to the Far East, featured highlights including fires on rooftops, a theatre made entirely of bamboo, electronic plastic darts and the most dubious use of Photoshop known to man:

Producer extraordinaire Gavin stepped up next to take us through progress he's been making on a project he's recently been working. Whilst details on the presentation will have to remain elusive for now as the project is still a work-in-progress, I can let you in on a quiz Gavin had us playing mid-Pecha-Kucha: can you guess which 2 Cogapp projects the following image is trying to describe? Answers at the bottom of this post...

Tristan followed Gavin's presentation with a talk about British Sea Forts. Having the honour of giving the first in house presentation to include handouts, Tristan gave a riveting talk about these rare beings - including information about them being built, sunk, owned, invaded, converted, renovated, experimented with and even turned into artistic installations. Turns out our sea forts are things of many talents!

Programmer by day, free software aficionado by night Alex Bridge stepped up to the mark next with his talk entitled 'Free Software - what is it and why should you care?'. In this talk, he elaborated all about free software, what it is and - surprisingly - why we should care. He explained the methodology and principles behind the incredible concept of free software, and the pros and cons of using and developing it over its proprietary kin. Billy and Calum rounded off proceedings with an insight into the good, the bad and the downright ugly parts of our student tech coding competition Codeo. Being the lowly Business Development Coordinator that I am, most of the technical side of this presentation flew over my head like Superman on a Concorde, but I could tell by the looks on the faces of the tech department that it was a great insight into how the competition is coming along and how the universities are integrating it into their semesters.

That rounded up the presentations for this time, and once the remainder of the cake had been eaten we all headed back to our desks much enlightened. Oh, and for those still wondering, Gavin's slide was referring to the Kidney Patient Guide (kid, knee, patient, guide) and ICONS (eye, cons). It's easy when you know how!