July 2004 Entries

This has been eating at me for about the last week now... I've been doing a bit of technical writing over the last while, and I'm starting to find that I actually enjoy it, although by no means do I claim to be any sort of expert.

I was given a technical specs document to read last week... I was appalled! I would be embarrassed to have my name on a document that was so horribly written... and yet many executives had signed off on the document, and it was to be sent to potential partner companies as an introduction to a new product...

Not only was the document very vague for a system behaviour spec, but there is no way it was ever proofread. There were existing grammatical errors that even Word picked up on, yet they hadn't been fixed. The document was so full of typos (“is” instead of “it”, “this” instead of  “have” etc.) it was difficult to understand. I know elementary students who can put together a sentence in better form.

As a student, I am amazed that a company would continue to employ a technical writer who can't use Word's spelling and grammar checker, or for that matter that they would not be concerned as to the image that this will paint for potential partners and customers. (Not very professional if you ask me...)

So I beg... at the very least USE SPELL CHECK! and don't ignore word's grammar corrections... they're often somewhat close... but the biggest lesson here is that Word doesn't catch everything... YOU MUST PROOFREAD! They taught you how in elementary school for a reason and it may someday save your job!

I found this on the Business 2.0 website (http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,515650,00.html):

God's Ink-Jet

My final post on Imagine Cup 2004 and our trip to Brazil.

It was amazing... that's all I've been able to say when people ask me about my trip without launching into a 2 hour discussion of everything we did and saw. The last couple days in Sao Paulo were great, we demoed our app at PDC for an afternoon, and I was able to take in a session (one of 2 that were in English). Thank you to all those (Morris, Mario, Shreyas, Amy) who planned this event, it was great!

After Imagine Cup my team was lucky enough to stay an extra 4 days and head to Rio. Wow, what a city! We had the chance to paraglide (or hang glide), do some shopping, sit on the beach in the sun, and see the sights. We toured the Tijuca National Park (Rain forest) and drove through Santa Teresa. Oh and we saw the colorful tiled stairs (in lapa) that were used in a bunch of music videos. We stayed on Copacabana Beach and spent some time walking through Ipanema. For a more exciting account of what we saw in Rio check out www.flasko.com/ngallery (give me a couple days so I have the comments filled in).

So it took a while to find a connection after leaving Foz do Iguacu, but here we are... our second presentation to the judges went fairly well... then we had to wait a few hours before the announcement of the 12 finalist teams (So we went shopping).

Dinner was great, but unfortunately we did not make it to the top 12. From here on... the rest of the trip we're gonna just relax and have fun...

Yesturday before leaving the Foz, we went on the Macuco safari boat tour... Amazing! that's all I can say... The falls were literally comming down on our heads at one point... talk about getting wet. Then we were taken to a bird park where I got a picture with a Macaw on my arm :) We flew back to Sao Paulo yesturday afternoon... I have to say seeing the shanty towns, and the fact that they are 200m away from big corporate highrises, has been one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen.

Last night was a blur as team canada (and one of team scandinavia) went out for dinner in a younger district of Sao Paulo (A resturant called Carleonne) then hit the bar accross the street (called Montecristo).

This morning, the winners were announced... A huge congratulations to Team Canada's Short Film team (uwoArtists) who tied for 3rd Place. Another huge congratulations to Team France who took home the world title in the Software Design Competition.

The rest of today? It looks like we're sitting in our demo booth for about 4 hours... (We'll see how long we last) and I am hearing rumors of some media work to be done later today (Canadian Media).

Ok so, yesturday was the lightening round... We had two 10 min presentations to the judges that centered on the what our idea was and how we accomplished it. It seemed to go pretty well... minus the judge in the first presentation who was asleep before we even started talking (How rude). It was a late night, after getting a chance to see all of the entries for both the rendering and short film competitions (These guys are amazing! Talk about talent both as an artist and computer scientist... Some of them will have jobs with EA or somewhere for sure! You can check these out for yourself at www.imaginecup.com), we spent a good few hours practising our demo for today as we have to stay within a 15 min time limit. 

Today we did our first demo at 8:25am (That should be 4:25 BC time) for the same set of judes that we gave our first presentation to last night... The one who had been asleep seemed slightly lost, but all in all we think it went really well. Almost lunch... so i'll post again tonight after we find out who moves on to the final 12... (hopefully after our presentation within the final 12 :) )  

We are representing Canada well... Last night was the Opening dinner and party, we all wore our Team Canada shirts and it seems that everyone loves us :) We partied it up (lots of drinking and some dancing... some very brazilian entertainment as well) and we are having an amazing time! The Massage was definately to die for... This morning we visited the Water Falls and took lots of pictures, including some of this strange racoonish animal with a long snout (i'll post the name as soon as I find out what is was). Today has been filled with preparations for our 2 lightening round presentations which happen at 5:30 and 7:00pm local time.

Media count - 2 interviews today... I was interviewed for a brazilian television station that wanted to know if it was weird as a female to be working on team of males. The second interview was our whole team talking about what imagination and technology ment to us... (I think we're gonna make the blooper reel for this one :) )

After a very long trip, a couple lay-overs, and a right plane engine that wouldn't start... We made it to brazil! We spent yesturday in Sao Paulo at the Ceasar, near the airport. The hotel was amazing! (a compound none the less - it even had a mote around it) We spent the day playing basketball, swimming, and eating. The service here is extraordinary! Today we checked out of our first hotel and flew to Foz do Iguacu. (We got a whole meal on a 1.5 hr flight) I thought the hotel yesturday was crazy... well this one... is waybetter! I've never been in something like this... ok so I know i need to travel a bit more... but they have a whole bird zoo, with tucans and ostridges and red turtles. They also have a spa (I'm getting a 30min massage for like $15can in 20 min) They've got a rock climbing wall, and tennis courts, and archery! It's nuts... So anyways since we're supposed to be setting up I'd better get some real work done... Our opening dinner is later tonight and then tomorrow we take a tour of the falls and go through our lightening round presentations to the judges... Wish us luck!