Winning an Award, Part 1 (the judging)
When my friend Jenn sent me the entry form for the MITX Awards several months ago, I figured it couldn’t hurt to enter. I had launched Episend just days before, so fortunately I had the video demos and other information they required for their application. I spent a few hours getting the answers ready and submitted my entry right at the deadline. Then I went back to work. A week or so passed and I received an email that my entry had made it through the “pre-judging” round. Very cool. After another week or so, the deadline came for them to let me know if I passed the next round of judging. The day went by and I didn’t hear anything. Oh well. I tried. Then at 6pm an email came through indicating that they needed another day to figure things out, so I wasn’t out of it yet.
The next day, I got an email that I was moving on to the in-person judging in Cambridge. I guess I was the equivalent of a semi-finalist. This judging would take place only a few days later, so there was not a lot of time to get nervous. From what they emailed for preparation, you get 15 minutes to show the judges what you’ve done and go through a PowerPoint if you want. I went to the judging and waited for my turn to be called. There were a bunch of us in a reception area of the Microsoft Research New England building squinting to see if we could read each other’s “Hello my name is” stickers.
I had downloaded a stopwatch application to my Droid that I would have running on the table next to me so I would know when the 15 minutes were up. When I got into the room, the first thing that struck me was how many judges there were. There had to be 10 or 12, although I can’t be sure. There was a long conference table that they were all seated around. They had obviously been there a while as the table had the moved-in look of piles of papers, paper notebooks, empty drink bottles, and laptops in front of most judges. I looked at them and they looked at me, so I just started talking.
I started my stopwatch app and tried to recite some of the elevator pitch I had tried to memorize so I wouldn’t start stuttering from nerves. The demo itself went fine – it was more interactive than I had anticipated, but this worked out well. Instead of going through the app for 5 or 10 minutes and then having a Q & A session, it turned out that I would show them one feature, and then there would be questions that would lead me to show another feature, and so on. I remember looking down at the stopwatch and saw it was on 7 minutes, so there was still plenty of time. After what seemed like just a minute later, the MITX representative in the room stated “time’s up!” It went by so fast!
I wrapped up quickly, thanked everyone for their time, and left having no idea what they thought. Worst case, I thought as I drove home, was that I got valuable experience demoing Episend for the first time and got to think about some of the questions the judges asked. My wife reminded me when I got home that just being there was a compliment even if I got no further.
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