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.