Logical Olympiad in Brno: new and better (Regional round of the Logical Olympiad 2016 in Brno)
This year’s regional round of the Logical Olympiad in Brno was revolutionary. Last year, our team decided that we would try to perform it as a show. We managed to arrange for beautiful premises, and Lenka managed to get us a higher budget. It was easy to be wise before the event, so we didn’t fear anything. The preparations were, however, largely theoretical, and many of us went to sleep on Thursday before the competition, asking ourselves whether it is going to be a mess or not. I will not stretch your patience, and tell you the result straight away – it wasn’t. At least, Iֹ’m not aware of it.
The meeting of organizers was really early in the morning, almost in the middle of the night, i.e., 6.50AM. I couldn’t recover from the early getting up before 9AM... But I understand that such an ungodly hour was necessary. There was really a lot of luggage to carry, and the lecture room in the campus of Masaryk University was a long way from the car. Even though it was a close call, we managed to prepare everything in time. As my ability to participate was not completely certain until the last days before the competition, I received a simple and easily replaceable task – to supervise the competitors and to register results of the “IQee”. When I went beyond my competencies by helping in collecting the tests from competitors and passing them to the team of evaluators, their leader, Lucka, considered it a good joke to tell me that I was going to keep evaluating them. I appreciated the joke by saying that I have other tasks to do - however my replaceability was quickly verified empirically, and I had the opportunity to be one of the evaluators. As with every time, we found out that even small children can come up with solutions we really didn’texpect. This is nice in a way, but on the other hand, it adds a level of complexity to the evaluation, which is on itself stressful – and fun. Sometimes, I was sorry that I couldn’t award extra points for creativity, I would have definitely awarded quite a few. In the end, it was a close call again, but we prevailed – all of the tests were evaluated in time, and I could even participate in the IQee.
The principal advantage of organizing category B was the fact that it followed an already completed and hopefully successful category A. We felt like we had grown wings, and we had no doubts that category C would be even easier. Actually, it was, if we discount our surprise that teenagers need a more detailed explanation that they need to register first, and only then are they allowed to take their place in the lecture hall – and only on the spot marked by their own unique code number. Everything ran smoothly, even Vašek (the presenter) was obviously relieved, and started joking during IQee. On the contrary, I experienced a nightmare right during the first task – perhaps twenty competitors raised their hands almost at the same time. Fortunately, there were quite a few of us, and we managed to agree on who was the first to raise his/her hand.
I need to say that I really enjoyed this year of the Logical Olympiad in Brno. I hope that the competitors and my co-organizers liked it as well, and that next year, we will repeat all the “close call” events again. If you want to experience something exceptional, join our organizing team next year; we will be definitely all too happy to share all those close calls with you.
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8.12.2016