We realize many things have changed in recent weeks, but The Tech Challenge is all about solving real-world problems. If we can’t celebrate your amazing innovations in person, we’ll do it online!

We know teams are in really different stages with their designs; the judges want to talk to you about your project regardless of where you are in your build. We know it can sometimes feel like performance is the most important thing, but this year the engineering journal and interview will be front and center. The judges can’t wait to hear about what you’ve done and see how you’ve documented it.

Our virtual awards ceremony will take place Sunday, May 3, at 3 p.m. Be sure to join us to see clips of devices in action and hear the winners announced. Keep an eye out for details on how to take part. 

After the Virtual Showcase, we’ll mail your Tech Challenge T-shirts and awards to your adviser, who will be responsible for distributing the items to team members safely. (This may mean waiting until after the shelter-in-place is lifted.) 

Please contact us at challenge@thetech.org with any questions.

Certificate of completion

How do I prepare for Virtual Showcase?

• Continue to work with your team through remote means such as Facetime, Zoom, Whatsapp, texting, and, yes, even phone calls.

• Check out our 2020 Tech Challenge videos, including tips for Virtual Showcase.

• Sign up and come to a virtual test trial.

• Work on your team’s engineering journal together using collaboration tools such as Google Docs.

• Check out Adobe Scan, a free app, you can use if you need to make a digital copy of your engineering journal. Tips for using Adobe Scan can be found here.

• Be sure to look at our Resources and FAQ pages for more information on how to be prepared for Virtual Showcase!
  
  

How do I submit things for Virtual Showcase?

• Once you sign up for a time slot, we will email your adviser a link to a Google folder that is for your team only.

• You can upload your engineering journal, photos, and videos to this folder for judges to review.

• We recommend short clip(s) from a smartphone to show device performance.

• Show your launch and device expansion for both area and volume.  

• Your total time for your video(s) cannot be longer than 4 minutes.

• Videos can be submitted as urls or uploaded as mp4 files. If you want to upload your video as a url, you’ll need to put the url in a Google doc and then upload the doc to your folder.

• Simple cell phone videos are great. This is simply to see what you have built.

• If you need to scan documents for uploading, we recommend using the free app Adobe Scan. See our tips here.