Seconds out, Round Two

Today was the second day of judging. All of the teams gave their presentation in front of another group of judges. Then, from all the teams a set of 12 were picked as going into round 2. The round 2 then repeated their presentations and then the final 6 are going to be selected for the grand final on Monday. That means that over the day I've watched 10 student teams strut their stuff.

And loved it.

The teams in the second round were doing their talks for the third time. If they were tired of the material it certainly didn't show. They were excellent. As one of the judges I then had to put numbers to all the performances (that bit I really hate, as I wanted to give everyone full marks) and then these are fed into the system along with all the scores from all the other judges.

Where it all goes down..

The final six will be announced tomorrow. After all the presentations the students took over the auditorium here to show off their projects. I took a wander around with the camera.

The embedded solution produced by the UK team. I'll grab a picture of the team at the big Expo on Tuesday.

The UK Team (Dominic Green and Ben Nunney) flanked by their mentor Tom Randell on the left and Ed Dunhill from Microsoft on the right. Their entry is an innovative game to raise awareness of environmental issues . You can find out more about it here.

An overhead view of the booths.

The Irish embedded team who used their project, a system to make an ordinary diesel powered car run on cooking oil, to actually bring them to Paris. On the way over a wheel came off (no - really) but they were still here this morning demonstrating their engine modifications.

The sunset from my room tonight. Very nice.

Tomorrow is a rest day, I'm hoping to actually be able to leave the hotel complex for a while and take a look outside.

Here Comes the Judge....

No pictures today. Not had time to upload any. I've been too busy having fun watching students give presentations about their projects. And there have been some excellent ones. Anybody concerned about the future of the planet, and the general decline of the way things are, should come to an event like this and watch young people speak so well, and with such passion, about the big problems that we face.

I can't believe that I get to come and do this for free. It is just so nice to be a part of the whole enterprise. The only hard part is deciding what marks to give at the end.

Eight more presentations tomorrow. I can't wait.

Imagine Cup Open for Business

I've been lucky enough to go to quite a few Imagine Cup finals. Each host nation works really hard to give the contestants the best time ever, and this time it is the turn of France. I was looking forward to this. If there is one thing the French are good at, it is having a great time.

First off we boarded the bus to the opening ceremony, which was being held at City Hall. I had been told this place was pretty impressive. We shall see...

On the way there we drove straight towards the Eiffel tower, which was nice.

City Hall is impressive. Very impressive. The ceilings in the entrance staircase were good enough, but when you got into the main rooms things got serious.

The poshest ceiling I've ever seen. We got to mill around and take pictures (I took lots - there are more on Flickr). It was nice to meet up with old friends from previous finals.

Each team got to walk up the "stairs of fame" into the competition, to a round of applause from those in the hall. This is the UK team having their moment of glory. Then we had a few speeches.

This is the Deputy Mayor of Paris, the chap on the right is his interpreter. I'm quite proud of the fact that I understood some of the bits that he said in French.

Jean-Phillipe Coutois very cool He talked about computers from way back when, stuff that I actually remembered using. Young developers have it so easy these days....

Joe Wilson made the very good point that this is probably the largest gathering of international students there has ever been. With teams from 61 countries here, there has never been a gathering like this before. That in itself makes the Imagine Cup pretty special, before you even look at the entries.

Finally Eric Boustoulier rounded things off by reminding everyone that we actually are going to go out there and build something of the future.

Once the ceremony had completed, and the competition was underway it was time for some food and a look around Paris.

Our train back to the hotel.

Tomorrow the judging gets underway.

Return to Planet Imagine Cup

Set off today to Paris, for the Imagine Cup world final. I've again been appointed as a judge, which is great. I thought I'd take the train.

Hull Trains to London

St. Pancras Station (spelt correctly for a change)

The streets of Paris

Taking the taxi

I've just got to my room, next step is to bounce back out again for he opening ceremony.

Strawberry flavoured milk at St. Pancras