ic 2009 journal, 6th entry: pre-finals

for round 1A of the finals we had to first deliver a 10min video presentation of our project. the deadline was mid-june, so after the national finals we had a full month left to improve the project. this was also the time when all of our exams were scheduled, so we obviously pushed everything until the last moment.

and by that i mean the very last moment, our first upload was one hour before the deadline, then we got  unhappy with the encoding and added a little more detail, uploading a second version half an hour before the deadline. we then realized that because of the summer daylight-savings we had a whole extra hour left! so we worked a little more on the credits, reencoded the whole thing and sent it a third time. the smaller version is still available on our team’s page here.

a few points about the film:

• we used Camtasia for screen-captures and editing, by the end of the night Andrei was a real wizard at using it. he’s also to blame for the end-of-the-world style intro
• all of the footage was taken from Home, we really need to thank its makers for releasing it under a Creative Commons license! i got to see it a few days before our deadline, so we took advantage of that (at least two other teams used the exact same footage in their submissions).
• i was kind of a zombie on the night we did this, Calin and Andrei did most of the work splicing bits and pieces together while i sort of sat in a corner doing the narration. some of those phrases still haunt me to this day…

soon after sending the video, we stopped development, this time for good. from that point on, during the last two weeks or so all of our efforts focused on presentation and branding. we had this nice tutorial with George Pristavu (a big thank you!) from Microsoft Romania, who gave us just the right skills to make a decent, role-based, emotionally balanced, subliminally-charged presentation. maybe not the last part

i don’t think we’re the ones to give tips on what your films should look like, there were tons of other films that looked better than our own. for instance, the French guys had one that looked professional. so that’s it! on a hot summer afternoon, we took a flight to Bucharest and then it was on to Cairo!

Filed under: imagine cup 2009, our story, tips

ic2009 journal, 5th entry: national finals – the teams

we’re coming close to the really fun part, it’ll take quite a few posts to talk about all the cool things that happened in Cairo. but first, as promised, this is dedicated to the teams from the software design Romanian finals in may 2009.

DreamTeam

an awesome all-girls team, from the Babeş-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, DreamTeam (Roxana Chelemen, Ioana Ficuţ, Oana Iova, Tania Nemeş and Mrs. Simona Motogna, their mentor) came in really close, taking the 2^nd place. they had top notch presentation skills, with probably rehearsed speeches and nice segues (all the stuff we improvised). they were ages ahead in branding, with matching apparel and a large poster boasting their logo. the project they did dealt with optimizing resource allocation and communication during disasters. i was kind of betting on them right before the final announcement, i guess a bit of luck got us through though.

NibbleIT

NibbleIT came in 3rd. they’re four junior year students from the same Babeş-Bolyai University: Liuţă Ovidiu, Ursan Andrei, Tănăsoiu Bogdan, Mircea Gabriel, again Mrs. Motogna as mentor. they had this cool idea about a community system for evaluating foods, with a device that you could use (together with their database) to tell you if the stuff you pick in any store is healthy, based on barcodes. one problem i think they had was having to push some of the better features of their project really late into the presentation, in part because of the questions that kept coming from the judges. but getting this far in their junior year is an achievement in itself!

248

Two People for Eight Goals (248), Bianca Mărginean and Ciprian Turcu, mentored by Mr. Ovidiu Domşa, of the “1 Decembrie 1918″ University of Alba-Iulia. i think they had the coolest logo of any of the projects, and an original name to boot: Coagulate. they used some of the techs we did, like Virtual Earth, but also other interesting stuff like Photosynth. the brave/insane thing about them was that Ciprian did all the dev by himself. that’s 3 x the fun, 3 x the brain damage from debugging compared to each of us…

Ecoteam

Ecoteam came from the “Ştefan cel Mare” University of Suceava, with four members (Ana-Maria Aconstantinesei, Iulian Baranai, Ionuţ Penciuc, Anamaria Popovici) and Mr. Ovidiu Schipor as mentor. their project, EcoMap, focused on environment-related problems. they also had an interactive map, bringing the total to 3/5 teams using interactive maps. i think it was during their presentation (they had the first cue) that we did the most coding, not very nice of us, that’s why i can’t remember much of what happened…

right, going back to the tips part now:

• branding matters! [later edit: or does it? maybe - only for the nationals - the fact that given the  short time-frame we dedicated more resources to dev than to this aspect got us through] you don’t need to invest in it heavily, just do something smart. the girls had white tops with blue scarves for contrast, i’ll add a photo of our Cairo t-shits later, they’re nothing over the top, just a bit catchy
• organize your presentation so that the coolest features don’t start after the first half, you’ll lose the jury’s interest by that time. kick in hard from the beginning and keep them focused with interesting stuff.
• minimize the amount of slides, maximize the showcase, you’re there to show off your tech. but keep away from describing mundane stuff like buttons or login procedures. have a more subtle way of showing that all the necessary things are there.
• especially if there’s more than one project doing similar stuff, focus on what you’re doing better.
• have a baseball bat ready in case your mentor decides to take part in the presentation. if that happens, it’s a showstopper.

p.s.: if any of you guys see this and you have links/contacts you want me to add, maybe your own post-imagine cup success story, i’d be happy to add it here. drop us a line

adi buzgar

Filed under: imagine cup 2009, our story, tips