Minho Campus Party

Minho Campus Party (also known as MCP) is Portugal's first and largest recurring LAN party. It takes place in the Minho Province region.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]

History

LAN parties originated from Northern Europe.

The event is a manifestation of the new opportunities for youth and youth culture in this millennium: All over the world, young people are coming together to create communities based on a mutual interest in computers and computing.

Locations by city, all events are held in Portugal, in the Minho region.
	Date start / end	Number of participants	Location	Area (m²)
2001	August 29 - September 2	300	Braga, Parque de exposições
2002	July 31 - August 4	600	Guimarães, Pavilhão Multiusos
2003	July 30 - August 3	1500	Viana do Castelo, Pavilhão da Associação Industrial do Minho
2004	July 28 - August 1	1700	Braga, Estádio Municipal de Braga	9500

Professor Altamiro Machado

The idea of bringing an event of this type to Portugal, and specifically to the Minho area, came from Professor Altamiro Machado (one of the pioneers of the education of computer science in the 1970s) a professor and then director of the Department of Information Systems (DSI - Departamento de Sistemas e Informação) of the Minho University. Looking for support from, and developing the first contacts with the team of Charles Pinto Spanish event. It was from his initiative that a group of about forty students of the DSI participated in the Campus Party 2000 in Valencia, with the objective of later helping to implement the Portuguese version of the event. Professor Altamiro Machado died at the end of March 2001. In his memory the accomplishments of the Minho Campus Party are a tribute to the university professor who was truly a man with a vision. During the 2001 event, a session to honor the professor's memory was held.

Network

Cisco Systems supported the MCP since its first edition, and for the past four years, mounting the network infrastructure and supplying the necessary equipment (an investment of more than two million dollars). Before the role was taken over by ProCruve Networking by HP Portugal Telecom supports the connection.

MCP 2004

3 (three) ATM, STM-1 (155 Mbit each), connected to the data centre of the Telepac (Portugal Telecom Group) on Porto.
15,000 meters of optical-fiber
30,000 of network cables

Areas

When official competitions didn't exist, participants frequently organized competitions between themselves, of which many become officially recognized by the organization.