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Cool Computing Competition

Win up to £120! The annual  Cool Computing competition was established in 2009 and  the department will be holding another in 2015. There will again be three cash prizes, and the competition is open to all Computer Science undergraduates. The aim of the contest is to develop some really cool demonstrations for UCAS open days. The winner will receive £120 and a trophy; the two runners-up will receive £60 each.  

Since the introduction of  Lego robots into the curriculum we have noticed a blossoming of student creativity, and have been most impressed by the ingenuity shown by a number of students designing robots and games. Above all, students give every appearance of having fun whilst learning worthwhile programming skills.

The department would really like to give prospective students a taste of how fun and interesting Computer Science at Royal Holloway can be. So we would love to have some new demos that appeal to intelligent 17-year olds and give a flavour of what to expect if they study here.

We are therefore inviting you to design a demo, to be judged by prospective students on a real live open day. It doesn't have to be a robotics demo; if you design a really cool demo that displays on an ordinary monitor then that's fine. Or it can run on some other equipment as long as we can easily purchase it. But remember that it will be viewed by about 40 people at once, so if your demo runs on a small portable device like a phone it is better if it can be viewed on a PC (and thus a data projector) at the same time.

As well as being judged by open day candidates for coolness the demo will be judged by the Support team for ease of set up; we want something that will run smoothly in years to come without the designer being present. And a lecturer will judge the demo for academic relevance.

You can work as an individual or, if you prefer, team up with friends and share the prize money. The software does not have to be all your own work: you can download things from the web as long as it is legal and you acknowledge your sources. You have a real chance of winning: there were five entries in 2009 but sadly none at all in 2010.

The deadline for submissions is 30th January 2015: see rules of the contest for more information.

You can also view reports of the  2009,   20112012, 2013  and 2014 competitions (there were no entries in 2010) .

   
 
 
 

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