Marport Maritime Mania
Marport’s 2009 Dealer Conference 2009 was held at the beautiful Hyatt Grand Cypress Hotel & Resort in Orlando, Florida from April 2 – 5, 2009. During the 3 day event, the conference brought together over 70 delegates from around the world to learn about Marport’s Software Defined Sonar technology.
On Friday evening, Marport hosted an Appreciation Dinner for delegates (covered in yesterday’s blog).
Saturday’s workshops commenced at 1000 and during lunch, Elias Olafsson from DanTrawl gave an interesting presentation regarding developments of pelagic and bottom trawl technology. A special thanks to Elias for his presentation.
Saturday workshops ended at 1530 – giving the delegates time to prepare for the team-building event known as Marport Maritime Mania.
The challenge was to design and build a 2-person powered cardboard boat capable of racing a designated swimming pool course in the best time. Each team was given corrugated cardboard sheets, duct tape and a plastic sheet to create a boat that holds 2 people! No other items were permitted to be used for building the boat.
Each team named and decorated their boat, designated a Captain and First Mate, introduced their creation, and then participated in the “boat parade”. Teams had one hour to design and build their boat.
Motivational music and lots of free-flowing beer helped the event along – as you can see in the pictures below. It was a hilarious event, and all participants really enjoyed behaving like little kids for a couple of hours!!
Team Blue listens intently to the rules and regulations. Petter and Tor are quite keen on winning this the race!
Team Orange at their “shipyard” with their “boat-building” materials
Team Yellow in their “shipyard” – looking quite colourful!
Team Black start building their boat.
Team Green use all available hands on deck for boat construction. Perhaps the other team members were using their hands to hold a cold beer 
Team Black proudly display their creation – Black Mamba
Team Orange’s creation – Yellow Duck – complete with cardboard “paddles”
Team Green’s catamaran design – Mondai-Nai (translates to “No Problem” in English)
Team Blue’s masterpiece – Tru Krawl (notice the beer holders located near the bow)
Team Yellow launches their vessel – Naughty Children – with Erin as First Mate and Robert as Captain
The Admiral of the Fleet – Birgir Sverrrisson – prepares to inspect his cardboard flotilla prior to the start of the race!
1st Heat – Complications arise in the race between Yellow Duck and Naughty Children. It seems that the Yellow Duck doesn’t like getting wet and Naughty Children had a little “stability” problem
Frank and Peter power the Mondai-Nai around the course
Loic and Juan provide propulsion for the Black Mamba
2nd Heat – Black Mamba wins as it seems that one of the watertight bulkheads in Mondai-Nai was not so watertight
Final Race – the Grand Winner was Tru Krawl – with Darren as First Mate and Petter as Captain.
Tru Krawl continued to stay afloat for 15 more minutes after the race – much to the delight of the children who paddled it around the pool for several Winning Laps!
The Winning Team with Marport laptop bags and assorted trinkets from Disneyland.
Thomas, Tor and Darren share a laugh after their team’s award-winning exploits.
Loic and Gilles from Marport France show off some of the catwalk skills that made Paris famous!
Anthony and Robert (software engineers from Marport Canada) are trying to figure out what went wrong – “it worked on my computer”…
Pat does his impression of “Popeye the Sailor Man”….in a strange way he kinda does look like Popeye
After the Marport Maritime Mania event, all delegates were served a delicious BBQ of steak, chicken and ribs on the poolside decks.
Marport’s 2009 Dealer Conference was a rousing success. We extend our sincere appreciation to all delegates for attending. We also thank the Marport team members that organized the event (with special mention to Glenda, Joy and Patrick).
And finally, we thank the management and staff at the Hyatt Grand Regency for their exceptional service and support.
Thanks again, we look forward to seeing you all soon. And in the meantime, remember the following:
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