The results are in for the 8th Annual CIRT-ACE National Design Competition!  And guess what Team 1 – WE’RE 1ST RUNNER UP IN THE “LIBRARY RELEVANCE CHALLENGE”! Congratulations Team 1!!!

If I wasn’t already being emotional and sappy about how well your presentation at the UIC Forum went, well then this just put me over the edge!  You guys have worked so hard over the past couple months and deserve every moment of recognition.  Plus, this will make your college applications look even more awesome.

CIRT Competition Board 1

CIRT Competition Board 2

Congratulations to Team 1: Alexis, Alondra, Brittney, Christian, Christopher, Dustin, Irene, Joaquin, Jonathan, Leandro, Matthew, Miguel, Patty, Pierce!  And another big thanks to all the Team 1 mentors to helped make this happen!

Team 1 + Week 19

Guys! We’re done!  Call me a soccer mom, but I’m seriously so proud of the presentation that you put together – it was amazing – and you all had great public speaking skills.  Your graphics looked great and your calculations and diagrams all made sense – we covered everything we could and hopefully you learned something over the past 19 weeks.  Here’s your Final Presentation :)

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Also, a big congratulations to Patty and Alex!  Patty was awarded a position on the summer design build team and was also a scholarship recipient.  Alex was awarded a position at VOA for a summer internship – we’re excited to have you and we’ll see you in the office soon!

ACE Team 1 Mentors and Students – We’ll miss you!!

Of course there’s still a lot to learn – and I think seeing what all the other teams have been doing at the same time – was a good opportunity to realize all the possibilities that are out there.  You can always ask yourself, “how can we make this better?”  “Is there another way to solve the problem?”  “Are we doing the right thing here?”  Design solutions are always evolving, and that’s the great thing about this industry – things are hardly ever black or white.  That being said, as you move on from this year of ACE *sniff, sniff* don’t ever hesitate to give us mentors a call or an email and ask us questions.  Mentoring doesn’t stop at the end of the program, and we’re happy to help you out in any way we can J

So I guess this is it!  Cue Space Jam’s “I Believe I Can Fly” (did anyone else know this was sang by R. Kelly?? I just learned this.) See ya Team 1!

Team 1 + Week 18

All we have left is our final presentation and I think I’m getting teary!  Maybe you guys are excited to get back to having a free Thursday night to stay out late, eat Taco Bell, and not worry about those mentors continually asking you where you think you want to move the column grid.  But, we’re certainly going to miss spending ACE meetings with all of you!  I should probably move on before my keyboard becomes unusable due to water damage from my tears.

But, it’s not goodbye just quite yet!  We spent a lot of time last meeting working on our verbal presentation skills and everyone is sounding really good.  I know it seems like talking for a minute is about the same as talking for forever, but if you speak slowly and clearly, it won’t seem like hardly anytime at all…unless you’re like me, and you totally black out from nervousness of talking in front of a crowd of like 2 people.  A couple good pointers to ensure a good minute-long, successful presentation:

1. Introduce yourself – pretty sure most people in the audience have no clue who you are – also this eats up like 5-10 seconds of presentation time :)
2. Talk about this project like you’re talking to a 3^rd grader – I mean, maybe not literally, but my college professor would say this a lot.  You’re presenting to a bunch of people who have no clue what you’ve been doing at ACE all year, so you can’t start talking and expect they know all the details – start with basics and elaborate from there.
3. Talk about what YOU learned – not only does this highlight what YOU did as part of the presentation, but then tie it back to how it helped the project as a whole.
4. You can add humor! – I mean maybe don’t start off with a knock-knock joke or a tap dance, but adding a little humor makes for a likable presenter.
5. Notecards – having something written out is great to keep on track, and even better if you totally freak out and can’t remember why you’re on stage to begin with.
6. Practice, practice, practice – if you don’t practice at home before the big day, you’ll likely fold like a lawn chair.  You don’t have to have a presentation totally memorized – but if you know vaguely what you’re going to say, you’ll have a much easier time spewing off information when you realize you’re talking to a hundred people, and not just your pet hamster.

Information for the –>Final Presentation!!

 FINAL PRESENTATION Meeting:

Wednesday, April 2

UIC Forum @ 725 W. Roosevelt Road, Chicago IL

Time 6:00-8:30