PLAY: a petanque tournament in pictures

Who said petanque is not a serious business? About a hundred Dutch web enthusiasts and entrepreneurs got up early on Saturday morning to play a tournament organized by The Next Web.

Here is the day in pictures.

Patrick de Laive and Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten assign numbers and lanes to all the teams.

Many teams came well prepared and well dressed in official outfits or handmade t-shirts.

After weeks of secret preparation and training some petanque teams were highly skilled. Team Soocial actually accused Pussy 2.0 of cheating while using window cleaner to polish the balls. The Geeks on Heels (yours truly and Laura) were the only female-only team present at PLAY and made it into the second round on heels!

Foods and drinks were supplied by The Next Web and the sponsors and the “bar” was a great place to meet new people and socialize.

PLAY is not so much a network event as it is about having fun and potentially meet new and interesting people in a different environment. It also served as a great way to give direct feedback to many of the startups present.

The weather was great, the people were great and I am now officially a big petanque fan. I can’t wait for the next PLAY event to play another under-appreciated sport. I suggest shuffleboard (sjoelen)!

Thanks to Sun, Wipido, Code-Shop, HVA, Blog08, WeekendjeWeg and Freshheads for supporting PLAY, and of course everybody who joined PLAY.

More PLAY pictures on Flickr.