Hey folks – sorry I missed posting last week, I was a bit indisposed trying to land a project.
Well, let’s talk about this week’s challenge, the location, and the outcome…
As others have discussed, the challenge took place on one of Washington States finest ferries, and it was indeed a timed exercise – Seattle to Bainbridge Island and back… the ferry over to Bainbridge was used by the film crew to set up, assess how sound and video would be affected by engine and wind noises and how the sun and water would affect lighting etc. It allowed the judges, Buck, Dandy and I to discuss the challenge, what we were looking for from the contestants and decide on some alternatives should Alex, Mike, Chris or Stacy solve the challenge in short order. The return trip as noted by the contestants as well as Buck and Dandy was fully allocated for the challenge…
With the setup complete and film crew, judges and contestants in place… the Ferry horn sounded and the challenge began and as noted by others… solved in 30 seconds… oh wait… not quite. As it so happens, Alex did solve it in less than a minute, than Chris and then I think Alex did again… but they were looking so hard for the answer they missed the easy answer and they weren’t really listening to each other. It was amusing in the beginning and then it just became difficult and disappointing to watch.
After the judges ended the review session and it came time to present their answer/solution, the decision on who would present came down to a rock, paper, scissors contest. As Chris described in his blog, we were less than thrilled with that decision making process and we let them know. If I remember correctly, what you saw on the episode was only a small piece of the feedback they received as a team on not only the quality of the presentation but their decision to use R,P,S and then the actual lack of clarity and agreement in the answer that was actually presented to the judges.
Certainly, expectations from the judges was a lot higher than the outcome we received, however…. each of the previous three challenges had messed with them in some form or another, so it was quite logical to expect that this challenge would be no different and I guess technically we continue the trend. Buck and Dandy had set the challenge up to be a lot more difficult than it really was, and the setup and the setting added to the difficulty.
At the end of the day, the judges were able to spend a few quick minutes de-briefing from the day and that’s when Buck let me know he was going to give the Mike, Chris, Stacy and Alex the last challenge over dinner. At first I thought it was a good idea…give them all an opportunity to start thinking about the last challenge and how they’d present their solution. But then Buck let me know, that they were going to be presenting their solutions first thing in the morning and they’d have to be ready to go at 8:00 AM. This meant they’d have to be up all night prepping for their presentations…. My next reaction was hoping they’d taken the feedback that we’d been providing to them all week… especially the advice to collaborate.
We’ll find out soon enough.
