Hey All,
I'm writing from the Wingate Inn in Phoenix, AZ at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.
So far it's been a fantastic, amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experience. For the opening ceremony earlier today, we had some AWESOME speakers. First, they had some mariachi band (which I didn't like much since I hate Spanish/Mexican-ish music) and a Native American trible/hoop dance (which I thought was really awesome) - mostly to represent the AZ culture, methinks. Anyway, after that, they had the chief meteorologist of AZ come up to stage (who from that point on was the sort of "announcer"). He then brought out the governer of AZ (who talked for a while) and she introduced/brought out Craig Berret (I think that was his name) - the President / CEO of Intel. He was a really awesome/laid back guy. He announced the "Intel Fellows" and "Intel Senior Fellows," which were basically Intel employees who had made some significant contribution to the study/progress in the Intel corporation.
The keynote speaker was Dr. Sally Ride (for those of you who don't know who she is, she was the first American Woman in space), who has her Ph.D in Astro Physics. She showed pictures from her flights in space.
We've also had a pin exchange (which was before the opening ceremony - last night), also very awesome. There were kids from 40 some different countries that were exchanging pins (and things of that nature). I'll have you all know that I got one from KOREA (w00t!!) ^_^.
I've also had somewhat of a chance to glance at the other computer science projects. Some of them are phenomenal. There's about 100 projects in my category, but I've only really memorized the titles of a few. There's another one on encryption (something to do with the number of sylables in a word + an encryption key, didn't read into it much), there's one on Decompling Java, some kid trying to get a cluster of Linux XBox's to network, one with a new multidementional mapping algorithm...ect. I can try to get a digital copy of the listings of project titles if any of you are interested. Also, if any of the above sound interesting to you, I can try to talk to the owner of the project and/or get a copy of their abstract for you (with the exception of those who's projects aren't in English...the kid a few projects down from me is from Istanbul, India. I think the one next to me is from Khazakastan :|).
Anyway, thought some of you might be interested. ^_^