Typical KDPV

Outside the window is August, the school is behind, soon the university. The feeling that an entire era has gone does not leave me. But you want to see in the article not lyrics, but information. So I will not delay and tell you about a rare topic for Habr - about school Competitions projects. More specifically, let's talk about IT projects, but all the information to one degree or another will apply to all other areas.

What it is?

A very banal question, but I have to answer it. It feels like a lot of people just haven't heard of them.

Project competition - a special event where one person or team shows their project to the public and the jury. And they ask the speakers questions, give marks and sum up the results. It sounds very boring (and considering some of the performances, it is boring), but you can show your creativity and win very easily. Yes, and earn experience in public speaking, which will be relevant at some professional presentations in the future.

Why do it?

Victories in competitions are often valued less than in olympiads. There is a whole register of Olympiads, but there is no register of competitions. But this does not mean that a good diploma does not give anything at all. With it, you can enter some universities (which, for example, sponsored or hosted an event) or promote your project (do not underestimate this point, this is how I got the initial audience in some projects).

But who said that it is worth going to such events just for the sake of winning? On them you can remove stage fright, gain performance experience, hear criticism of the project, learn how to answer smart (and stupid) questions from both competent and ordinary people. And this is often more important than any diploma in a simple “olympiad” at the municipal level.

It is also worth considering that, compared with boring Olympiads, not only pure knowledge and the ability to solve problems are needed here, but also the skill of presenting information, twisting out of difficult situations. You need to have charisma (highly desirable) and pump eloquence into a hundred square meters.

Now that I've brought you up to speed, let's get started.

How to find contests?

If everything is clear with olympiads (especially school ones), then it is sometimes difficult to do this with competitions. Where to find them?

Actually, I had my own supplier at school. He was a computer science teacher, for which I am grateful to her. It was from her that an interesting era began, she helped us (my team) with this task. Yes, and with many others too (sometimes it is difficult to understand the situation or evaluate your performance from the outside). Yes, and it can be interesting to discuss with an experienced person the organization of the past event, the performances of the participants and how the jury distributed the places. So, I advise you by all means to find such a person in school.

But even if this does not work out, then do not despair: dealing with everything is not so difficult. You just need something to grab on to. For example, my teacher's email was listed in a huge number of mailing lists. And every time new provisions just came to the post office, she filtered them and gave all the most interesting to us. And you, my reader, should try to do the same. Just try to search for communities on this topic, look for both city and federal ones. Any. You need all options. In the summer, the organizers of not all competitions post information for the current academic year, but you can search for information for the old years.

By the way, the season starts somewhere in the fall, when the organizers publish the dates. Then, around the new year, a decline, and activity returns (and even becomes higher) somewhere in March. The season ends around April-May.

So let's say you already have something on the hook. After that you have to find the position of the competition. There you can find the following very important information:

1. Date and place of the event.
2. Nominations (directions) of the competition - some competitions are purely specialized (for example, there may be something in school mathematical education), some are broader (maybe something in biology, IT or physics). Here you have to choose what suits you as close as possible.
3. What can be used for protection (papers with text, for example) and in general how it goes. Specify what equipment will be provided. Sometimes you even need to bring your own laptop. I even had one event where they were given only a table, a wall (a poster describing the project had to be hung on it) and an outlet. It was even impossible to distribute WiFi there! And this is an IT competition?
4. Criteria for evaluation. Somewhere, to my surprise and shame, they give extra points for the fact that the project was completed in a team. Somewhere for the fact that the project has already been implemented. Well, the list can go on and on. But it usually looks like this:

Criterion and its description	Importance (percentage of total score)
Novelty and relevance of the work Absence of similar projects or something fundamentally new in solving old problems	30%
Perspective - plans for the development of the project in the future. You can simply insert a list with 5-6 options for improving the project into the presentation	10%
Implementation - everything is vague here. This includes points: complexity, reality, thoughtfulness of the idea and independence.	20%
The quality of project protection (more on that later)	10% *
Correspondence of the result with the goals, the scientific part of the work and all that	30%

Let's talk separately about the quality of protection. Such a clause may not be in the position, but it is very important. The point is in the key difference between competitions and olympiads: here the evaluation of works is more subjective. If the latter have strict criteria, then the jury might just like the fact that you tell everything positively and cheerfully, your diction and intonation, the quality of the presentation, the availability of handouts (brochures with links to where you can watch your project live) . And yes, there are a lot of options.

The jury must remember your project, your performance. You must clearly learn how to answer the questions that you will be asked at the end of the defense (or simply agree with the minuses of the project and promise to fix everything, this also works sometimes). Yes, and learn how to communicate complex information in an accessible way. Look at other performances and realize that 80% of them are very boring. You don't have to be like that, you have to stand out.

My friend, with whom we performed in almost all such competitions, said that it is important to be yourself, joke a little and not memorize the text. And yes, it really matters. If you just write a complex text, learn it and tell it, then it will be very boring (I will talk about this below). Don't be afraid to joke, make the jury smile. If they have good emotions during your performance, then this is already half the victory.

Reference hall for performance. Large screen, speaker board and comfortable chairs included.

How to prepare for a speech?

The most interesting part. It is worth remembering that there are no such people who make their project specifically for any one competition, and then score on it. You just need to make a very high-quality presentation once, and then change it for different events. I am not an expert in this area, but I think that some of my presentations look very good. Here are some tips:

• Make as little text as possible. Insert pictures that are very contrasting and only when they are needed. Minimalism is very important here, people don't like overloaded presentations. Try to include as few photos as possible, replacing them with computer-generated illustrations (free stock images work very well). But make sure they are all in the same style. If anything, you can always edit them a little in some illustrator. You can not put any pictures in the background. Just a dark color or gradient. Dark due to the fact that almost all performances take place with a projector in bright rooms. In such rooms, such a background helps to better highlight the text and other information on the slide. If you have any doubts about the readability of the presentation, then go to the nearest projector and check it yourself. Color can be selected using special sites, for example, on color.adobe.com.

Sample slide from my presentation

• Understand what you have to say, don't learn. This is much easier than memorizing 4 sheets of A4 and the performance will look livelier this way. Nobody forbids you to look at the screen during the defense, and if you are afraid of this, then take a pointer and pretend that you are not reading something on the screen, but showing it. And more often than not, you can take a few sheets of cheat sheets with you, put them on the table and read from them. But this needs to be clarified in the regulation. Yes, and you can’t abuse it, you can just navigate through such sheets, but don’t read everything from them, because ...
• You need to keep eye contact with the audience at all times. You need to like them too, this is very important. Especially if you came to sell your product, and not just win. You can make business cards (just print out little papers with the name of the project, its description and a link to it) and hand them out. Everyone loves it and it is more likely to bring in new users.
• Don't be afraid and don't be shy. You can always agree with one of the teachers at the school and try to speak to the students. Yes, these are not the same people as in the hall at the competition, but the emotions and feelings are the same. And learn how to answer questions.
• People really like it when they show some kind of result. It doesn't matter what project you have. If this is some kind of program, then show it on the computer that is in the audience. If this is a website, give a link to it, let people come and look. Can you bring your research object with you? Cool, come on. As a last resort, you can simply record the result on video and embed it in your presentation.
• Sometimes there is a performance structure in the competition regulations. It is desirable to adhere to it, most often the jury does not pay attention to this, but it will be a shame if you get points cut off at such a simple step, right?

What should be prepared for?

I already wrote about the key difference between competitions and olympiads - everything is more subjective here, there are no clear criteria for evaluating points. Absurd cases sometimes follow from this. I am not ready to share all of them in this article, but if anyone is interested, then write in the comments, I can make a separate article with the most interesting of them. Let's get down to business:
Be prepared for complete non-compliance. The fact is that it rarely changes from year to year, but the conditions for holding it change more than. So at one annual competition in my city they still ask for CDs with a copy of the project. For what? Why not send it, for example, by mail? Unknown.

Another point follows from the first point. The rules of the competition may be written about the division of participants into groups by age. But at the very last moment it turns out that there are 5 people in your age group, or even less. What happens next? You are paired with some other age group. And so it turns out that almost adults 16-18 years old participate with very children who are 10-12 years old. And so, here you need to somehow take into account the age difference in the assessment. As a rule, younger participants are in an advantageous position. In my recollection, this most often led to the fact that children were awarded diplomas for frankly stupid performances, and adult participants were ignored.

Often the jury is openly unfair. I had a situation where the whole audience strongly supported the project and the performance of my team, but the jury gave the victory to weak works. And not only they cheated us, there were a lot of other worthy projects. But no, the jury decided so. And you can not argue with them, they are the main ones. By the way, if anyone is interested, it turned out to be a matter of geography, there was already a younger winner from my region (immediately an example for the second point).

Of course, be prepared for criticism. To the justified and to the one that is caused by a misunderstanding of the topic. There were very unpleasant cases when the participants in the course of the discussion became personal. Well, this is very annoying to see. Remember that you are still in a scientific (pseudo-scientific) society and you need to behave appropriately.

Сonclusion

Do not underestimate competitions of this kind. They are really interesting and make the brain work from a different, more creative angle. In the article, I tried to show that project competitions are a very relevant topic that allows you to develop skills, charisma and the ability to find a way out in difficult situations. If this article seems interesting to the Habr community, then I can make another one in which I will tell the most interesting cases that happened to me at such events. Well, in the comments you can ask me any questions about the topic, I will try to answer them in as much detail as possible.

And what stories do you have about contests?

Only registered users can participate in the survey. Sign in, you are welcome.

Have you taken part in project competitions?

• Yes! I like it!

• Yes! But somehow it didn't work

• No, I didn't know about them.

• No, there was no desire / opportunity

Voted by 1 users. 1 user abstained.

Source: habr.com