Today is the "Imagine Cup World Festival". What is it? I don't know either. Before sometime between 2 and 7am this morning (when today's schedule was slipped under my door) I had the following description from this year's imagine cup booklet:

Students will be guests of honor at the Imagine Cup World Festival. Open to the public, the World Festival is a combination of technology fair, Imagine Cup awards ceremony, entertainment, and networking event. The event will be held in the spacious Marine Auditorium, and will feature local TV personality emcees, keynote speakers, and musical guests. Awards will also be given out for Algorithm, Visual Gaming, Short Film, and Software Design.

Given "technology fair" and on the advice from some other staff attending the event I assumend it was similar to our involvement at TechEd/PDC last year in San Paulo. That is, Software Design entrants would be given the chance to demonstrate in a "science fair" style environment to each other and to other attendees from the general public. Today's schedule basically says: 13:00-16:00 Imagine Cup World Festival Opening Performance by Meiwa-denki Keynote Speech Award Ceremony So this is really unfortunate. I'm sure it will be a great day. But... Now there are 31 software design entries that I will probably never see.