The main competition table was setup with multiple identical laptops provided by one of the sponsors, a company that builds workstations.
There was definitely a LAN Party vibe to it. The first few rounds, folks were pretty relaxed but by the end as the stakes got higher and people were being eliminated you could see that people were starting to get a little anxious. The prize was a cool $5K plus extras so when it came down the wire the feel of “competition” became more evident.
At the end, when the winner was announced, the 2nd place guy was very gracious… and no one exhibited anything negative at all.
There was a sort of ‘sports’ feel going on as well… which continued through the interviewing of the winner at the end.
