Posted by Skrud at Sunday, June 17th 2007 at 1:40pm
This has been an incredible week. Starting with landing down on Sunday, and meeting my team for the first time: Jay, Scott and Chris, from varying corners of the U.S. We sat down and fleshed out a project idea for a Virtual Classroom system. The idea is to recreate the classroom experience, add new forms of interaction to it, and extend the reach of world-class professors. People could take courses over the internet, by attending lectures, in real-time, from classrooms around the world. They could interact with the class by asking questions (and eventually, by real-time chat with TAs or other classmates). We had powerpoint slides being synched up from the teacher’s podium to each student client, and we had the ability for whatever the teacher would draw on the slides to be redrawn on each student’s screen. We also had streaming audio of the lecture being send to each student. I’d love to give you guys more detail on the project, so ask me about it over a pint sometime.
The bulk of the week was spent in our hotel room office, coding, testing fixing and coding. We didn’t have time for any fancy development practices or anything formal; we went for the iterative/last-minute model: get stuff working fast. We got a lot of input from our Microsoft mentors: Jaime, Mike and Justin who came by the hotel nearly every day (and got free dinner ;)), helped us organize ideas and practice our presentation. These guys volunteered plenty of their own time to helping us out, and it was much appreciated.
Yesterday was the big presentation day, where we had to show off what we’ve done to a panel of judges, which included Microsoft researchers, with backgrounds in physics, and engineering… It was kind of brutal. The picked apart every presentation to the point where we had no idea whom would win. Obviously, given the limited timeframe, a lot of the projects were in the same relative state of hastily-written code. There was one project that stood out, which was polished and clean, and had a great idea. This was ObjectSpace, which presented a 3D, interactive coding environment that would teach people how to program. We were sure they were going to take first place. Our presentation was pretty good, and we were confident that we’d be in the top 3.
When it came time to present the awards, however, ObjectSpace came in third. At this point my heart was pounding. We knew we were getting something for sure — because they brutally singled out the two teams that didn’t win anything before announcing the winners. And if ObjectSpace came in third, that meant we had a damn good shot at first place, and Korea. Then we called up for second place, or — as it says my trophy — “1st Runner Up”. (I think “2nd place” sounds better). This was more than we could’ve hoped for, and not bad for a weeks’ worth of work. ;)
I’m really glad I got the time to meet up with my friends who’ve moved out here to work at Microsoft, too. I took the time on Tuesday to check out Taphouse Grill with Vivian, and I went over to Nadia’s apartment to play some pool with her, Ahmed, Eric, and their friend Rosh. Vivian came back out to drink and eat sushi with us last night, too. Who knows when I’ll get to see these friends again — hopefully sooner rather than later. I kind of regret not being able to see much of downtown Seattle (we had one afternoon where we went to an arcade/bar and Scott and I defeated House of the Dead 4), but this week has been a blast nonetheless. You can bet I’ll register for Imagine Cup again next year.
And finally, I’d like to give a huge THANK YOU to all the organizers. Especially Stephanie, who had the stressful job of being a temporary Mom to some 24 geeks throughout the entire week. She made sure we got fed, met our mentors, had time to practice, and enjoyed ourselves throughout the week.
That’s it for now — I’ve got a plane to catch. :)
Tags: 2007, code, events, imaginecup, microsoft, travel | no comments
Posted by Skrud at Saturday, March 31st 2007 at 4:19pm
I came in 4th place and I’m going to the North American Finals in Seattle!!!
(Actually, I think I actually came in 5th … there was a mistake in the rankings chart. Brad was ahead of me by two points).
But before I get into the details, I’ll give you some context.
Last night was a party and a half. I’ve been meeting up with so many people here in Toronto: Linda and Brit who came down to visit from Waterloo; Erik (Rickster) who came from Fort McMurray, AB where he’s been for far too long; Alex and Trelaine and Chris from University of Ottawa that I met at CUTC this year; Mark from Waterloo; and Jackie from Infusion, whom I’ve run into and virtually every conference event this year, and Kurtis, CEO of one of the Infusion-related companies. Jackie recommended Madison Pub, so we went there.
Microsoft gave us all American Express gift cards with 125 “points” on them. 1 point = 1 US Dollar. It’s supposed to be used for the taxi cab to/from the airport as well as dinner. Well, a lot of places don’t take American Express – taxis included. Luckily, the pub did. So we all opened up tabs.
After the drinking (and lots of nerd talk), Jackie and Kurtis led Guillaume, Rickster and I to Burrito Boyz – which was packed. To add to the randomness, I ran into Bob and Jeff from McMaster there. They’re not even here for ImagineCup, they were just getting burritos. The burrito was delicious. And huge. I wasn’t hungry at all today and could barely eat breakfast or lunch. So much fun!
So I get back to the hotel at 4:15am, where I meet my roomate, Lucas, since my key card mysteriously ceased to function and I woke him up with my repeated attempts. Two hours later we wake up shower and head to breakfast at the MaRS centre.
Of course, nearly all the delegates from Quebec were hung-over. But that’s no problem, I’m used to coding hungover (thanks, CS Games). About a third into the competition, I had implemented the entire problem with the exception of the shortest-path algorithm, and jumped up to 2nd place. I then spent a lot of time researching Dijkstra’s algorithm, which I should know, and have definitely learned, but couldn’t for the life of me remember how to implement. Eventually I got bumped down to 5th place and kind of stayed there. At the end of the competition they announced a 4-way tie for 4th, and so there are 7 people in total going to Seattle in June for the finals!
So tonight, we celebrate!
Tags: 2007, competition, events, imaginecup, microsoft, toronto | 11 comments
Posted by Skrud at Friday, March 30th 2007 at 10:03am
The organization of the ImagineCup competition is just shy of appalling. I’m sure it can’t be easy to organize a massive software design competition on an international scale, but still – some things are just plain weird.
It started out innocently enough: Microsoft will book the flight for you, and the hotel, and give you a credit card upon check-in with a $125 limit that you can use for food and taxi to/from the airport.
The semi-finals for North America are being held simultaneously in four different cities. All the Canadian semi-finalists are to compete in Toronto, tomorrow. So here I am, checked in at my hotel. My flight came in around 8:35am. It left Montreal around 7:30am. I was at the airport around 6:30am. I woke up at 5:30am. I went to bed at 4:30am. I got home last night around 3:30am….
I don’t know why my flight was booked at 7:30am, and not - say - 5 in the afternoon. At the time I confirmed the booking, I was under the naive assumption that they would group people together by school and/or starting location and we would all be on the same flight.
Nope. All the other Concordians are on separate flights. Mine is the only one that was ungodly early.
Arriving at Pearson Airport around 8:30am, I got my baggage and hopped into a cab to the hotel. $50 later … and here I am.
So I check in at the hotel, and the front desk clerk says “You are sharing your room with another person …”. That’s okay. I was kind of expecting that. Why would Microsoft book 150 single-occupancy rooms? That makes no sense. Surely, I thought, Microsoft wouldn’t be so vacant as to expect geeks to share a room with a random stranger that they have never met, and would instead lump together people from the same school or city…. I give Microsoft too much credit. I don’t know who Lucas is, but he’s not here yet and I’m kind of weirded out by the lack of tact on the organizers part.
Oh yeah, and the front desk didn’t have any welcome packages, track jackets, credit cards, lanyards, or anything else that I was told they would have for me when I checked in. So they called the Microsoft bookers, and they didn’t know anything about the welcome packages, either. “Maybe you’ll get it when you register,” they said. Knowing when and where to register was something that was supposed to be in the welcome package …
And finally, even though this is an older one, Microsoft requires that you bring your own laptop in order to compete. This in itself is pretty strange, since usually the computer that you use is a controlled variable. They apparently will provide computers for people that don’t have one… but anyway… My laptop is a PowerBook. That is, an Apple PowerBook with a PowerPC processor. I couldn’t run Windows on this even if I wanted to. (Virtual PC is unusable.) No Parallels. No Boot Camp. Some kind friends offered to let me borrow their MacBook Pros, but I declined. First of all, I don’t want to be responsible for someone else’s laptop, and secondly – I prefer being a shit disturber.
What I do have is TextMate and Mono. Now all I’ve got to do is memorize the .NET API and I’ll be set. (We’re allowed internet access during the competition, but MSDN is notoriously annoying to navigate.) Plus, if I perform reasonably well, then it’ll just be embarrassing for the people using Visual Studio.
I just got an e-mail from the organizing lady saying that the welcome bags haven’t arrived yet, there was some confusion but it’s sorted out now. ;)
Things to do today:
- Take a nap (and hope Lucas doesn’t barge in and wake me).
- Write a SOEN 337 assignment.
- Party.
Tags: events, geek, imaginecup, microsoft, rants, tech | 2 comments
