2007 iTest Post-Mortem

Couple of thoughts I need to get down on the Blog before I forget them.

1) Excellent work by our staff. Dave Cowart did an excellent job handling the iTest website responsibilities amidst all his other things going on, and same for Mathew Crawford in answering emails over the weekend regarding specific iTest content questions.

The only reason the 2007 iTest went as well as it did, with as few people as we utilize, is because the effort started so many months ago. Thanks to Mathew, Nathan, and Zach for great questions. Dave, great job working on the site over time and continuing to fine-tune.

2) We've got to provide educators/sponsors with a dashboard where they can see all of their teams in real-time. This will cut down on a lot of the effort we had to do this year in helping teams change members, change Captains, and change passwords. This will be in the works very soon.

3) Along the same lines, we've got to do a better job communicating that once the competition begins, no changes can be made. Teams simply have to take responsibility for their selection of members and their all-important Team Captain.

That being said, I do want to experiment by adding the ability of team members to "mutiny" and change the Captain designation from one team member to another by virtue of a majority vote during the competition. This will likely only be possible once per team during any given iTest competition.

4) Procrastination is not a good idea in life, and it's not for iTest events either. We've been slammed with record server activity for two years in a row now at the very end of the competition. Get your answers in early. We've got to communicate this better as well next year.

5) Overall, great competition for us. Sets us up well for the launch of the iTest CS as well as another strong iTest Tournament of Champions run. We'll be looking for student input around the time of the iTest CS on what our next competition should be.

Now, we've just got to keep the financial contributions coming in. Students, if your parents are looking for a tax write-off...we've got your place to contribute!

Thanks for a great competition and to students, educators, and parents for your participation in the 2007 iTest. Now it's time to sleep.