First Victory - Day 0 of Microsoft Student Summer Camp
Above picture (click to enlarge): Our Xbox team’s first-place work in today’s activity. The competition was to create the tallest and most beautiful “tower” within 20 minutes using several chopsticks, newspapers, a roll of tape, and a glue stick. The Xbox team scored 100 points for height (the highest) and 70 points for aesthetics, totaling 170 points, winning first place among the 10 teams on site.
At 19:00 on August 23, the “Ice-breaking Journey” of the 0th day of the 2013 Microsoft Student Summer Camp was held on the first floor of Microsoft Building Tower #1. (To complain about the name, “Ice-breaking Journey”, I thought it was a negotiation with the opposing camp) Nearly 200 Microsoft scholars and representatives of Microsoft student clubs from universities across the country participated in the event. As soon as the event started, the host’s phrase “let everyone get to know each other” shocked everyone.
Then, according to the 10 colors on the cards, they spontaneously clustered into 10 groups. Most of the easily distinguishable colors formed a single “nucleus”, but it seemed that white formed two nuclei at both ends of the field. It seemed that gold and pink were hard to distinguish, and some people stood in the wrong team, so I have to complain about the organizer. A certain color occupied the commanding height of the podium, and using the microphone, they had their troops in order when the whole field was still in chaos.
Each team was named after a Microsoft product, such as Xbox, Windows 8, Visual Studio, Windows Azure, Office, etc. In the next 25 minutes, each team of 17~18 people had to complete the arduous tasks of electing team leaders and deputy team leaders, designing logos, writing team songs, posing, and designing slogans. Each person also had to be assigned to one of the four groups: Coding (Windows Azure programming), Plan (business plan), Show (creative show for the evening party), and Story (news story reporting).
After a brief silence in the first minute, our Xbox team had a student volunteer to be the team leader, and another student immediately agreed to be the deputy team leader, so our team had a strong leadership core. Everyone first discussed the division of Coding, Plan, Show, and Story. As expected, many people reported Coding. Our team promoted the spirit of stepping back and having a broader view. The girls and those with many Weibo followers voluntarily switched to Show and Story. Coding and Plan finally had five or six people each, which was quite balanced. (Yes, I’m not in the Story group, writing articles and sharing with everyone is my habit. I’m not in the Coding group either, because I want to try something new)
At this point, more than half of the 25 minutes had passed. A classmate next to me suggested dividing into three groups to design logos, write team songs, and pose. The team leader divided the girls to write the team song, those who can use PS to design the logo (actually drawing with colored pens on foam plastic board), and the rest to pose. For someone like me who has no artistic bacteria, naturally, by default, I posed. At first, someone suggested posing the Xbox logo (an X in a circle), but no feasible plan was discussed. So, just pose the four letters “Xbox”. I have done such quality expansion activities in school, two Xs each use one person, b and o each use two people, and it was quickly done.
Despite our best efforts, our team still forgot to design a slogan. When it was time to go on stage, a kind brother proposed “from sky, to higher sky” as the slogan, and finally it was shouted out, although it was “different voices”. Since we were the first team to present, it was a bit rushed.
The most impressive part of the presentation was the Office team. The team leader of that team had a public figure “style”, his speech was loud and powerful, which made the whole field, which was in chaos and holding various meetings, turn their heads to listen to their team’s presentation. A few teams also had really good artistic skills, and they drew quite decent logos in such a short time.
After the presentation, it was the “tower building” with newspapers and chopsticks mentioned at the beginning of this article. At the beginning, our team had two opinions, some thought that the base should be reinforced, and some thought that we should continue to add upwards. We used two chopsticks taped together and wrapped in newspaper as the “basic element” to build a “tripod”, which is also the foundation of most teams. To avoid divergence, a horizontal chopstick was added between every two legs. Later, we felt that the bottom was quite stable, so we made three more “basic elements” and attached them to the three legs of the tripod, and then used the method of setting fractures to tie several chopsticks at the “joints”.
In retrospect, it’s clear that this alone wouldn’t have been enough for the height, but those who squeezed to the front were busy reinforcing, and those who didn’t squeeze to the front could only watch from the wall. A classmate from Taiwan, against all odds, made a long “lightning rod” (most of us thought this structure was not stable enough). At this point, the competition was in countdown, and everyone hurriedly fixed the “lightning rod” to the top of the tripod, and added three more “basic elements” to reinforce it. (No picture, no truth, click the picture to see the big picture) Ten seconds before the countdown ended, the last “basic element” was just tied to the skeleton. Unfortunately, due to the rush, the tower we finally made was a “leaning tower”.
I sincerely thank that classmate from Taiwan. Without his “lightning rod” design, our high tower would never have been the tallest “building” in the field. Other teams also had “lightning rods”, but their tripods were not as big as ours, and each leg of our high tower was as long as four chopsticks. The fact that such a large frame did not diverge is due to the design of horizontal reinforcement and several classmates who wrapped the tape. They were afraid that it was not strong enough, so they wrapped it round and round…
Since I live just a street away from the Microsoft building, I brought back the fruits of our team’s victory. The reliability of using a lot of tape at that time was evident, as we bumped into the ceiling all the way, and the “tower” made of newspaper and chopsticks still stood tall.
During the class meeting, Guobin said that the unorganized group interview requires various roles, and those who play important roles are more likely to pass the interview, while those who do not contribute in the discussion are unlikely to pass. Today’s “tower building” activity is like a miniature version of a software project, requiring people to give directions, people to work hard (make basic components), people to “nitpick” (wrap tape), people to think independently (make lightning rods)… The role of team diversity is fully demonstrated.
The bell for midnight is about to ring, and we are about to make the leap from day 0 to day 1. Look forward to it. (To Renren Network readers: This article was written in my blog, and I have set up automatic synchronization on Renren Network. I don’t know how often Renren Network crawls, so don’t blame me if the news becomes old news…)