Hands-On Judging

Today it was time for the judges to get “down and dirty” with the teams. Each team had a 15 minute conversation with each judge in turn, showing their application running and getting scores and feedback from the judge Of course, I’m not a judge, but I was determined to join in the fun. I made it my mission to take a look at every single entry in the competition by the end of the day, and I pretty much made it. Some teams I when they presented, others I met up with on the showcase floor.

I started off by “shadowing” a judge as they chatted with a team, but having nearly bitten my own tongue off several times (nobody is supposed to ask questions except the judge during the demo) I gave up on that and went off to chat to teams that were in-between judge sessions. This was great. Teams seemed only to happy to practice their pitch on me, and I love finding out more about their solutions. Once or twice I got shooed away by a “proper” judge wanting to talk with the team, but it was great to be able to meet everyone. One of my regrets in previous competitions is that I didn’t have time to see all the entries, just the ones that I was judging. However, with my “captain’s hat” I don’t judge this time, so I’m free to go and chat. So I did.

Once the hands-on rounds had finished it was up to the judges to enter their individual scores and then these were combined to get a final score for each team.

And then we found out who gets the prizes. The numbers were unequivocal, which was good (I had this private nightmare of everyone getting exactly the same score).

So, once we had done our work, it was time for some play. First up with a bus ride to boat that would take us to the Winter Palace.

This was a boat a bit like ours, zooming past.

Docking

Now, that’s what I call a palace.

We got a tour of the palace and a potted history of Peter the Great and his dynasty. If you think Shakespeare had some dramatic stories, some of the stuff that went on here proves that real life can also provide big time drama and intrigue. 

Gold statues and fountains.

This picture was taken at around 10:30 at night. Amazing

How it must have looked when Peter was in the house.

Not Judging Judging Day

We had a great day judging the presentations today. I’m not actually a judge this time, I’m the competition captain. This means that I’m involved in making the judging work, but I don’t get to write down any scores.

But I still get to watch lots of the presentations, just to make sure that the judging process is working the way that I think it should. Today I’ve seen a whole bunch of lovely projects. Tomorrow I’ll watch through some of the booth demonstrations and see how well the teams can show off what they’ve made. I’m thinking that they’ll do a pretty good job.

Of course I’m still wearing the Lego watch….

I made a very brief visit to the student showcase. Can you guess which country this team member is from.

Imagine Cup Briefing Day

Today is the day that the competition gets going. But first we have to tell everyone, competitors and judges, how everything works. For me this means sorting out presentation content and then getting to to the best bit, which is actually deliver the briefings. John and I had a great time telling folks how it all works, and then we went out to have our pictures taken with the teams. I did have time to take a few pictures, here they are.

This is the panorama from the front of the hotel. Impressive eh?

.. and this is a slightly tweaked version of part of the same view.

The front of the hotel has these flags all around it.

At the internet cafe they have loads of machines for folks to do their email and surf the web. This is what was on the screens when I walked past. Honest.

These are the student teams at the World Citizenship briefing. You can tell that this is a proper presentation to actual students because the seats at the front are all empty. They are a great bunch, poised to do some great things…

Update on Monday, July 8, 2013 at 05:58PM by Rob

I said at the presentation I'd make the slide deck available. If you want to see it, you can download it here:

http://sdrv.ms/14Dy9Yp

Heading for St. Petersburg

If I ever go on Mastermind my specialist is going to be “Terminal Z at Frankfurt Airport”. Today I had around 8 hours to study the place and I feel I know pretty much all there is to know about it:

• It is very clean and tidy
• They have aeroplanes there
• …and a MacDonald's
• Eight hours is around seven hours too long to spend there

Anyhoo, the good news was that I managed to pass the time well enough, particularly after I found the seats with the power sockets to recharge the gadgets.

This is our plane, being prepped for the last part of the journey.

I met up with Simon and Ben, who had travelled over from the ‘states and were noticeably more wide-awake than I was, but I put that down to my 4:00 am start today. Anyhoo, we arrived in St. Petersburg at the appointed time and, after I was reunited with my “big case” in the luggage claim area (a particularly emotional time for me as I always fret about losing all my extra-tall clothes) we headed for the hotel.

The driver was in a hurry, and we found out why when we arrived at the bridge that links the island containing the hotel with the rest of St. Petersburg. Every night, at around 2:00 am, they open the bridge for a while to let ships go through. We arrived just in time to be among the first to cross the bridge when it re-opened, which was unfortunate in one sense, but did give us a chance to take a look around the place and take some snaps.

This is the bridge as it opened.

There was some pretty impressive artwork on the sides.

St. Petersburg by night.

I got to my room around 3:00 am and then spent a while unpacking my big case and putting everything away. The real stuff starts tomorrow. Can’t wait.

Cottingham Day in Good Weather

Today was that rarest of coincidences. We were in the country, the weather was great, and it was “Cottingham Day” in the village. They had all kinds of stuff going on, including some vintage cars that were parked all around the village. This is a close up of one of them. I so wanted a car like this when I was a bit younger. A “non-price” to anyone who tells me what kind of car it is, and for bonus kudos, the car it was based on.

I took a whole bunch of other pictures which I’m sure will appear on these pages over time. It was a great day