BDPA Los Angeles founded in June 1982 has been training students to compete in the national high school computer competition (HSCC) for many years.
One of the most talented students to come through the program is Evan Angcos. Evan was a member of the national team from Los Angeles in 2007, 2008 and 2009. He shared the following thoughts on his HSCC experiences:
The 2009 BDPA Technology Conference was a memorable and worthwhile event. This year’s conference held in Raleigh, North Carolina at the Raleigh Convention Center. Twenty-three (23) teams represented chapters from across the nation; each with the goal of ending the Southern Minnesota winning streak.
Our chapter, the well-known Los Angeles team consisted of five people. Each team-member was required to be an expert in different parts of the application development life cycle. The application usually has standard requirements over the years so assigning tasks and priorities was not too difficult. This year we had a new edition to the team, Mani Lewis. The four other team members were Terrell Allen, Angela Bell, Tyrone Hinderson, and myself (Evan Angcos), the team-captain.
After a long flight, we *endured* the Opening Ceremony with the keynote speaker Lamman Rucker. The next day was the first day of the competition and we were ready for our first event (Round Robin). This year, many of the questions were different, but we succeeded in answering three out of the five questions correctly, the other two we were incapable of answering without proper preparation. After the Round Robin was Quiz Factory. It was a shame to find out that the only questions that were the same in Quiz Factory were the BDPA history. As for the other questions, they were all different from what we studied.
Overall, our scores were good and we actually scored the highest (even higher than Southern Minnesota) in the quiz event!
The next day was the final round; building the application. We went through the application with a breeze, because we did several mock-ups before going to the competition. Unfortunately, during the last minute of the programming event, the wrong code was deleted which left one of our pages dysfunctional. We were discouraged as we walked from the room, and into the holding area waiting to give our presentation. Our presentation was a full 15 minutes long but after leaving we felt we made a good impression on the judges.
The last and final day was filled with excitement. We made our way to the Raleigh Convention Center for the Awards Gala. We wanted to hear our name called for the top 5. We wanted to end Southern Minnesota’s winning streak.
Sadly, we did not and we didn’t place in the top 5. We deserved it, but we were just unlucky this time. We were prepared, and properly trained by our coordinators … after the Awards Gala we got our results. Surprisingly, we placed 7th place! We were grateful that we placed at such a high rank and the highest in the Los Angeles’ Chapter history. Some of us are determined to come back and take top 5, and it won’t be long.
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