Nope, didn’t win OEC. Not even close. Out of 7 teams in the Entrepreneurial category, we didn’t place in the top 3, so we’re anywhere in the lower half, wonderful!

In all honesty though…24 hours later, it’s not so bad. I’m slowly becoming more and more satisfied with the fact that we really did our best.

I can see here that my last entry was written in the early morning hours of Wednesday. So, I guess I didn’t even mention all the insanity that occurred on Wednesday night, Thursday and Friday. On Wednesday night, all four of us were scrambling to get our presentation done. We wanted to have a consistent look between our presentation and poster. So, before we could work on the poster, we had to get some good content down on the presentation. See, the thing is, for printing purposes, we really needed to get the poster in for printing by Thursday at some point. So, there we were, feverishly working with Powerpoint. Seeing as how we were in the Entrepreneurial category, we knew very well that the focus would be on the marketing aspects of our product. Unfortunately, where in the workd were we going to get data for something that had no real precedents? Oh, how we spent hours just trying to figure out how to spin it all. Keith and Tony left early, if I recall correctly, leaving Henrick and I to come up with a solution. I think we eventually got to a very good point at 4 or 5 in the morning. At that point, our presentation had all the basic concepts in place. That enabled us to move on to our poster. Unfortunately, the pair of us were so dead tired that we were quite non-functional. With some constant napping in between, I think we managed to pull something out by 1 p.m. Thursday. This is what they looked like.

So, we sent it out for printing, after which we both went home for some good napping time. At about 4 or so, my cell phone went off. The printing place called to state that the printer was doing strange things on to the poster, meaning that it couldn’t be printed. I had no idea what they meant, but anyway, I scrambled to make adjustments and resent it. By the time I did, they were ready to close, so I wouldn’t find out the results until the next morning. What suspense! So, on Friday morning, I headed straight over to the printing lab and to my relief things looked just fine. That’s pretty much it for the pre-OEC craziness. I mean, Friday was the day we headed over to Toronto for the competition.

It was very nice of them to put us up in the Sheraton Centre. It’s a damn nice hotel, and the beds were very very comfortable. On Friday night, dinner was served buffet style, which was alright except for this really horrendous black olive paste that was served with the crudités. Blech. Everyone was taking the orange-coloured dip, while the black stuff wasn’t being touched. I figured that I would try it out to find out why. Well, it really was pretty damn gross.

Friday night/Saturday morning was really rough. The four of us stayed up until about 3 a.m. practicing what we were going to say with our slides. We had to rehearse multiple times because we were going well over our 20 minute time limit every time. It was all so very tedious. We declared the session over though when we finally brought it down to 18 and a half minutes.

Morning came very quickly. Soon enough we were on our way to the Bahen Centre on the University of Toronto campus. Man, I think there was a lot there that wasn’t too prepared. I mean, we had to wait for a while for tables to be set up. Power wasn’t readily available for any of the teams…except for the few that staked out a place by the power outlets. Before anything was happening, we stood around the end of this long wooden bench. Some competitor from the Royal Military College told us “we’re going to be setting up in this area”. We weren’t even looking to unload or anything. What the hell? I didnt realize what that was all about until I saw that there was a plug right there. Smart move, I guess. I mean, we didn’t get power to our table area until 15 minutes before the demonstration time. Yes, we should have come more preapred. I mean, looking at other teams, some brought suitcases of extension cord. So very insane.

Demonstrations came and went. When the judges were at our booth, our damn car refused to work properly. Cursed! Well after the point , we figured out that the problem was due to the amount of sunlight coming in from above, hitting the floor, and confusing our sensors. Rotten luck, I suppose. Throughout the day, the car worked intermittently. We had to explain things so many times. My throat became dry really quickly. I wasn’t pleased with the fact that the organizers didn’t consider having bottled water ready for us people in the Entrepreneurial category. I mean, we’re constantly talking with people. It’s tough.

Overall, competition wasn’t so fierce. It was quite boring being there, actually. Once again, it was mostly Keith and I manning the booth. The other two took more time to see the other booths, and to watch the other people’s presentations. After every presentation, they’d come out with feedback and more ideas on how to improve our own presentation. By the time our presentation slot came around, our presentation was lean and TIGHT. I swear, our marketing plans were academically solid. We had figures and statistics to back up everything. By all means, we should have nailed everything. The only thing that I didn’t consider was that…realistically, it was all a bit outlandish. I’ll spare the details, but bascially, we were being entirely too optimistic about whether a car company would take us under their wing or not. Back then though, I didn’t realize it. So, when the awards banquet came along, and we weren’t called up for anything, I was heavily disappointed.

When we got back to our room, everyone else was really unsurprised. Me, on the other hand, I was ready to come here and blog something saying that this event was an utter waste of my time. I guess I can see things in a different light now.

The market analysis and risk management info was solid. Our poster was excellent. I didn’t get to see anyone else’s presentation, but from what I heard, our slides were the most beautiful. Our project had a large “cool” factor. I think we were solid competitors; it’s just too bad that the judges didn’t agree. We would have felt much worse if we didn’t give it our best…but because we did, I can remain satisfied. It’s taken me a whole day to finally realize that.

So, that was my weekend. Things aren’t yet ready to settle. This week is pretty packed with stuff as well. However, I know that it’s all simple stuff in comparison. Bring it on.