2012 Christmas Party Overview

The 2012 Christmas party was a huge success with the support of all those who attended and a line up of interesting games and activities. The party kicked off with speeches by CIO, Peter Nikoletatos and University Librarian, Roxanne Missingham. This was followed by a combination of great food and a range of creative games and activities for the attendees.

While one corner featured a fun photo booth with some very interesting props, another corner had four teams competing in a
Bridge Building activity with straws and tape. The bridge building game captured a lot of attention from the crowd and just like any other competiition the underdogs who joined the competition last claimed a prize too.

Best design and tallest bridge
Jessica Welch, Ying Fang, Darrell Dorrington, Fonny Kyle and
Ji-Yeon Cho

Longest bridge
Thomas Riches, Jonathon Stefaniak, Mandy Snashall and Sarah Bey

Strongest bridge
Byron Carr, Owen Brown, Samantha Shaw and Sally Haysom

Other contenders
Nick Dal Molin, Anant Vima, Emily Rutherford and Paul Yeoh

Another game that was popular until the end of the evening was the typing competition - Low vs. High Tech. Three typewriters (one manual and two electronic) and smartphones were competing against each other for typing speeds.

1st Prize
Carlos Bravo
34.2 seconds

2nd Prize
Anne Kealley
37 seconds

3rd Prize
Judy Apps
40.3 seconds

The party also featued a surprise flashmob of the famous 'Gangnam Style' prepared by Cathie Gough and a group of staff members.

Finally, the Santa Sack was once again a big success. The rules to access the Santa Sack required finding someone with a matching picture card. We spotted some people cutting deals about matching cards....the matter is under investigation and will be resolved by the next Christmas party... or so we hope ;)

News in brief

Fund raising for charity

The organising committee raised over $600 for charity at the Christmas Party and will donate this amount to ACT Rescue and Foster (ARF). The charity was selected based on a poll conducted earlier this week.

Front (from left): Samantha Gilbert, Dallas Burkevics, Weston (dog) Back (from left): Francesca Foppoli, Aine Dowling, Adam Taylor and Lyn Boyer.

Santa sack goes rogue

We heard rumours about guests conspiring and using their picture cards more than once to have multiple turns at the Santa Sack and we also saw the size of the 'fist' increasing rather dramatically over the course of the afternoon.

Move over smartphones, the electric typewriter is king!

To everyone's surprise, in High Vs. Low Tech the electric typewriter was the one where everyone scored the shortest typing time and a very few tried typing on their smartphones. Suppose we still haven't lost our typewriting roots.

The curious case of the super glue

After clean up at the venue, the organising staff discovered a very interesting piece of evidence (picture below) in one of the bridge building boxes. This was not part of the kit provided to the participants. Do you know which team this belongs to?

The team of ITS/SIS elves

Samantha Gilbert, Byron Carr, Hayley Calderwood, Matthew Tinley, Belinda Day, Candida Spence, Robert Snape, Anant Vima and Christine Keogh.

Have some feedback
for us?

If you have any feedback for improvements and fun inclusions for the next Christmas party - please email us at
outreach.its@anu.edu.au