Seriously Serious Pie Competition. (and Open Gov Baa Camp)

At reasonably short notice I flew up to Wellington. The excuse was to go to the Open Government barcamp and hackfest. It was my first time to one of these events… It’s an (un)conference where the participants make up the agenda for the day. Really it’s just a good way of generating a lot of conversation.

The theme for the conference is to open up and lobby for access to Government held data so that interesting things can be done with it (well, that’s what I think anyway). Not quite sure where to from here.. and not quite sure what the current appetite within Government is for this sort of thing to happen. Seems to me that if New Zealand is trying to promote itself as a knowledge economy – then the more of this there is the better.

Anwyay.. enough with the serious stuff.. well, differently serious..

Glynn kindly let me stay at his and Jayne’s house. They did warn me that I would have to judge in the pie competition. What I didn’t realise was that I was the single sitting judge. This competition is serious. I mean seriously serious. Check out the prizes and score sheet.

The trophy that they were all trying to win (here modelled by Nic – the previous winner) was the belt and small engraved pot.

So.. I found out that I was doing the judging. This was serious pressure. Had to try and make sure that everything was completely fair and above board. Forgot to take pictures of my comments on each pie – but I was rigorous. Some pies had matching beer / sauce combinations. You’ll see a red plastic gun – which had to be checked in on the airplane as the security people thought it would be a risk… sigh.

The pies were quality – any of them would be delicious for dinner. However, there had to be a winner.. and it was Mikey with the pie below on the left. I would have rather awarded it to someone who hadn’t engineered the situation at Glynn’s stag which wound me up in hospital – but fairs fair, it was good. Glynn one the beer match – and Brett the sauce. Inge the desert pie (citrus flavour is my favourite)

Mind you, I think Mikey may have sampled one too many of his own pies ;)

Still, it was lovely to be up there and hang out for the weekend. Maaike and I should be heading up in November again – once she books the flights (I’m not allowed to book anything .. something about having to be sure she doesn’t have any classes on..)