Vienna: April 11th – 12th

I’ve always thought of it as a small central European country … which it is, but this has not always been the case. It was once the heart of one of the most powerful (if not the most powerful) empires in Europe and today Vienna contains many of the majestic artifacts and buildings from that time. Here are a few things that I didn’t know about Austria:

• Maria Antonette who, when told that the French people couldn’t afford bread replied “Let them eat cake”, was an Austrian princess
• Her sister, Marie Louise was Napoleons second wife
• The Hapsburg empire included Austria, Hungary and the Czech lands, and
• “To zalezi” means “It depends” in Czech.

While I was visiting Vienna a Slovak newspaper published a picture that showed a Great Dane and Chihuahua. It was a great coincidence consider we’d just discussed estimating the day before. Here’s the photo:

Team: 10,001
I had two great teams in Austria. This first team called themselves ten-thousand-and-1 after a (fictional) future vision of the Xbox. What features will the Xbox 10001 have? What can it do? Well, apparently it will make you coffee and will free us all from slavery! =) Here’s the team and their brochure:

Team: Scrum Dogs
The second team did a doggy day-care exercise which feature testimonials from Maria Theresa. Although the idea of a doggy-daycare was not entirely new, the team felt that there was definitely a market opportunity in Vienna. I wouldn’t be surprised to see several doggy daycares the next time I’m here! The team is shown below with their work: