Competition Day!

Competition day has arrived! This morning the national 2nd place teams competed for the opportunity to participate with the national 1st place teams. Nigeria and the United States team from Buffalo, New York emerged victorious. Both teams look like they are very capable of competing with the other top teams. After lunch we had the drawing to determine the order of team choices for presenting in the first round. For example, whichever team drew #1 had first choice of presenting today or tomorrow and in which time slot. We did not draw #1 but we did draw early enough to be able to choose to present today and to choose the next to the last time slot. We wanted the last slot but it was already taken and next to last is ok too except the #1 Nigerian also chose to compete today in the time slot before us. They are a very, very strong team.

In Abuja alone, there are 57 SAGE teams in addition to the other teams throughout the nation. The #1 Nigerian team is from Abuja and faced very stiff competition to get to this event. The #2 Nigerian team is last year’s SAGE World Cup champion so one can see how they are so consistently strong. The SAGE entrepreneurship curriculum has been adopted in 500 Nigerian schools and has been identified as a significant means to empower the youth of the country as a catalyst for change and in the years ahead to move the country forward to become a major economic player in the global marketplace.

The top two teams from today and the top two teams tomorrow will complete in a final round, head to head at the Hilton Hotel late tomorrow afternoon. After the afternoon’s competition we will have our closing event at the Hilton Hotel including announcement of the winners and the fireworks party afterwards. None of us will know which top four teams will advance to the finals until after we get to the Hilton which means every team must leave here prepared to present a second time.

Two really strong teams presented just before us. South Korea had a very strong professional presentation. They have a business that connects small time inexpensive publishing venture with business advertisers with minimal advertising budgets and connects them to the right targeted youth market for future loyal customers. The Nigerian team has a business to sell CFL light bulbs. Nigeria’s primary stumbling blocks to increasing the standard of living for all Nigerians is clean water, reliable energy, and stopping the Aids epidemic. The presenters referenced what we have already learned first hand by saying that in Nigeria, reliable electricity is a ‘maybe, maybe not’ proposition. We had already one blackout during one of the earlier presentations. The use of incandescent light bulbs further taxes an already overloaded system.

Our presentation today was fraught with challenges from the moment we started. To begin with, due to speaker problems, the sound system was disconnected. Speaking without microphones was not a big issue for us because the room is small and we’ve learned to project our voices but we had counted on the sound system for the music background for several slides and also for the sound in several of our video montages. We have 5 minutes once we enter the room to distribute our annual reports, set up our technology and prepare for the presentation. We must start at the moment they tell us “go” and not before because the judges need the time to look over our annual reports and our media packages. Because Jane enters the room to distribute the annual reports by using the “hawker” and announces the annual report to the judges, (critical to a component introduced later in our presentation) a SAGE college mentor misunderstood and stopped her because he thought she was starting too soon. It was quickly corrected and Jane went on but it was a distracting start. Then the LCD that we had connected our laptop wouldn’t power up. It looked like we weren’t going to be able to start. It finally seemed to see the signal and we were ready to go when it went out again. After a several minute delay, we started again. Then halfway through the presentation, while Jasmine was making an entertaining but defining point, out it when again! When there are technical difficulties the time is paused but we don’t get to “go back”. This time it appeared that the LCD was not going to come back up and there was no backup machine. Fortunately we had brought our own LCD for practicing so Ms. Kemp had to grab the key to Alberto’s room, run upstairs, get the projector, race it back downstairs, bring it into the room and then we had to go through all the steps of connecting it to the hotel system and to our laptop. Luckily Tenzin, Jane, Monica and Alberto are technological wizards and were able to get the job done as efficiently as possible under the circumstances. Unfortunately because of the down time it’s hard to regain the momentum. We were offered the option of starting all over again or picking up where we left off. After some discussion, we decided to leave the decision in the judges’ hands. They unanimously opted to have us start a few slides back from where we left off. Disconcerting but we handled it. What else could we do?

When the presentation is concluded, the judges have time to ask probing questions that are intended to test us beyond the presentation. Just as we started the questioning period, we had another blackout. Thank goodness it was after the presentation and not during our closing “pledges”. They are a powerful conclusion and to have possibly lost the impact due to a power outage would have been more than a team should have to manage. At least during the questioning there was no need to stop again since there was plenty of daylight in the room but it was one more distraction. We are reminded every day that Nigeria is a developing country.

We left our LCD up for the last team of the day which was Tanzania. With no backup projector, they would not have been able to present unless they used ours. Then for some reason, their laptop would not connect to the LCD. Fortunately they had their presentation also stored on a flash drive and Tenzin brought up his laptop and connected it to the LCD and the Tanzanian team was set to go. We can only hope that our “grace under fire”, our backup preparations in case of emergency and our willingness to share our equipment with another team did not go unnoticed by the judges even if it’s not included in the judging criteria and the scoring rubrics.
We’re not sure how we feel about the results of the day. We undoubtedly feel the Nigerian team will move forward and the 2nd team choice could be us or could be South Korea. We’ll find out tomorrow afternoon. If we do move forward, we are assured at least a 4th place finish. The first through fourth rankings will be based entirely on the final presentations. Previous scores do not move forward. We’ll see.

Tonight was definitely “let-down” night as we took a night off from practicing. After dinner we mostly hung out but later in the evening we got our second wind and moved down the lobby to try and connect to the internet and connect to many of you. The internet has been a challenge which is why the blog postings have been delayed and the photographs often come later. During the day the internet connections seem to slow down so much that it is impossible to connect. If we’re on battery power, we use it all up just waiting to connect. It’s not until around 11:00pm that it comes back up. It’s still very slow and loading pictures is sometimes impossible. Work in progress I guess. It’s pretty funny to see us over the lobby trying to find the best hotspots. Tonight Tenzin found the direct Ethernet outlet under the concierge desk and quietly connected. It was still slow but definitely more reliable than the hotspots that really aren’t so hot. 

It’s way past midnight so time for us to wander up to our rooms to sleep and await whatever tomorrow brings for us. It’s great to read your comments on the blog, keep them coming.