This particular competition was considered at the end of 2022 SkillsUSA championships.  Having poor attendance in both Web Design and Game Technology, I realized we would need to replace both of the contests for the following year.  I knew that I wanted to introduce the new High-Altitude Balloon (HAB) STEM Challenge, but still needed to find one more interesting contest.

As I thought about STEM and the powerful aspect of quality research, it hit me.  It was like a revelation.  Immediately I knew this was a perfect contest to include for the upcoming year.  The problem was that I had NO clue how to perform this and needed some guidance to get it started.  

I reached out to my MUN teachers for advice.  It helped a bit, but they are used to live debating and not a virtual setup.  I also needed to find an organization willing to serve as POC (contest coordinator).  In the end, I asked my Deutsche Telekom partner if they would be willing to help.  He agreed, but strangely he did not have to time to commit properly, so I wound up designing and managing 90% of the contest.

I was able to access a Technology Debate format from the TSA organization which I used as my model for the debate.  I tweaked it heavily for what I believe would work best for us and then found an online tournament bracket generator so that the students could see their status.  I also purchased Zoom Pro so I could introduce a number of breakout rooms for the different actions.

A day prior to the contest, I had but three judges from the Legal Office, so I asked one of my AFCEA colleagues to recruit members from his squadron.  In the end, we had over 12 judges.  This turned out to be a bit of a disaster as we were not prepared to manage this many people into the individual breakout rooms.  In the end, some judges waited in a breakout room for nearly one hour before they were properly admitted to the contest rooms.  

From the student side, the contest ran well, however, from an organizer perspective, it was horrible.  Lots of lesson learned here.  I would reduce the number of judges and have more than one host for the breakout rooms.  This was the big problem.  My Telekom partner over extended his role and was confused as to how to manage the judges, teams and other groups simultaneously.  It was HARD!!!

If I were to ever oversee a contest like this again, I would change many aspects.  But in the end, it was one heck of a competition and the students learned A LOT... and that is what it is all about :-)