First Qualifying Round - PGCon 2013 in Ottawa, ON, CA

[Abstrct]

Our first qualifying tournament will be held at PGCon 2013, the PostgreSQL conference for users and developers held in Ottawa, Canada. PGCon takes place May 21st to May 25th and more details can be found at http://www.pgcon.org.

More details for qualifying will be laid out in the weeks to come.

Prizes:

• The top 25 players in the tournament will qualify for the championship round at DC21
• The player who finishes in the top spot at the qualifier will get Free Entry to DEFCON 21*
• Other prizes to come as I figured them out

* Note: This is out of my own pocket and not necessarily affiliated with DEFCON. I also can't pay your airfare/hotel but I am trying to get some sponsorship to potentially help with that.

[Abstrct]

Re: First Qualifying Round - PGCon 2013 in Ottawa, ON, CA

We held our first qualifying round last week at PGCon 2013 in Ottawa, Ontario. This was a perfect place to start the qualifiers as PGCon sees many of the leading users and developers of PostgreSQL; meeting to discuss the past, present and future of the database we love.

We had about 15 people sign up to play in the tournament over the span of the conference and, even though they were mostly new players, they did pretty well. Anybody who has tried the Schemaverse understands that getting familiar with the game in a short period is no small feet so we really commend the effort the players put in to compete.

So what exactly was everyone competing for and who took home the gold?

Early Bird Winner

One license of Navicat for PostgreSQL - This software is the best commercial database DB interface and we were lucky enough to have another copy to give away.

This prize went to the player who was leading the pack at the end of the initial tutorial session.

Big congrats to Greg_d128 for winning the Early Bird! He was a tad shocked when his name was called but the system doesn’t lie ;)

Best Hack

The bought off zazzle official Schemaverse Best Hack Cup!

This stylish mug, which features the slick Schemaverse elephant, was awarded to the player who disregarded what little rules The Schemaverse attempted to enforce and played their version of things.

It was Foo who took home this prize. I won’t go into too much detail on his hack until the final championship is over but I will say that it involved the always fun trading system.

In the end, Foo’s hack got him that sweet mug. but it wasn’t enough to get him the title…

Schema Supremacy

The Schema Supremacy - PGCon 2013 Hoodie
One badge to DEFCON 21 in Las Vegas, NV

The Schema Supremacy is the leader of the pack, the player with the biggest, baddest fleet by the end and the most conquered space to call their home.

This year, at PGCon 2013, the title of Schema Supremacy was claimed by a Schemaverse veteran: funbuster. It was a very close battle between him and foo but, in this case, the legitimate player claimed the prize.

Side note: Unfortunately, funbuster will be unable to join us in Vegas and graciously donated his prize to an auction run by PGCon. The proceeds of which went to a local Ottawa women’s shelter. We welcome him to play the Championship round remotely.



Some final words

The PGCon 2013 conference was a lot of fun and I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to bring the Schemaverse back for another tournament. All and all it was a much better start on the road to the championship than I could have ever imagined.

Of course, it couldn’t have happened without our sponsors. In no particular order, thank you to Navicat, The InfoBunker, PGExperts and PGCon themselves. You are all incredible for supporting our ridiculous game :)

Finally, thank you to those that played, discussed, visualized and broke the Schemaverse.

-Abstrct