Entertainment for intellectuals: playing “What? Where? It depends?
We here once told how the guys from Veeam Software decided to find out "who in the world is smarter," put together a team of "What? Where? When? ”And went to compete with other IT people (and not only), and even won, and not even once. Since then, a lot of things have changed in this very world: the Olympic Games took place in Rio, in St. Petersburg, it seems, the stadium was built, and Veeam backed up not only virtual machines, but also physical machines.
But today is not about that, but about how you can hold a tournament on "What? Where? When? ”In my company, what is the use of this national team, and how surprisingly the participant’s career can turn as a result.
')
In fact, the people in our offices have a lot of what they play: there are special rooms for the kicker and table tennis, someone prefers chess and checkers, there are also fans of the table. But we decided to aim a bigger game. After all, the team of CPG needed fresh forces in connection with the departure of some players to the Czech Republic, moreover, more and more newcomers, telling at interviews about their hobbies, were called intellectual sport as well. In general, we thought and sat down to organize the Veeam Mind Cup.
I’ll just say that there were no professional event managers among us, so we approached this task, we can say, in an engineering way: we look at how it works - we isolate the components - we assemble it from identical parts, if necessary we “process it with a file” that is, we adapt for ourselves.
So, somewhere we look at how an offline game for an audience of several teams takes place. We fix what resources are involved and what processes are taking place. We pretend what preparatory actions will be needed, and who in our company is responsible for what (purchases, paperwork, mass mailings, etc.). Putting it all together and get the "layout" for the event. The following is a brief summary of the key points.
Item 1. Room: If you don’t have very many people, that is, 30 people (these are 5 teams), then you can play in the office - in the classroom, in a large meeting room, in the dining room, etc. As for us, this year, there were 13 teams from both St. Petersburg sites, which is more than 70 people, representatives of almost all departments. Therefore, we were puzzled by the rent of a spacious room and the organization of a coffee break. We quickly found a suitable conference room in a hotel not far from both offices. In theory, it is possible to arrange a rental in the House of Culture, in the House of Children's Art, or just in a cafe (for the first time we did so - we rented a cafeteria in our business center).
Important! The hall and the equipment must be preliminarily tested and provided for domestic trifles - for example, so that at the critical moment the batteries do not sit at the microphone, and the jury has where to put the laptop to work with the tournament table.
Item 2. Question editor and moderator: The next important thing is the selection of a package of questions, that is, the work of the editor, and the role of the moderator. Here we use our acquaintances for official purposes and - hurray! - like a year ago, the person and thesteamer pedagogue, Mikhail Igorevich Skipsky, acts as the editor of the question package and the presenter!
The bet on the star presenter in our case fully justifies itself:
Dasha Aksenova, project coordinator in one of the offices, secretary: I used to watch the game “What? Where? When? ”On TV, and I had a dream to send a question there. Later, while I was in school, I already had the experience of the game: we performed with the school team “Korzhi” at the city and regional “Brain-ring” tournaments and even won prizes.
When I learned that such a corporate game was being held in our company, I was very happy and interested, and when it turned out that Mikhail Skipsky would be the leader, for me it was just incredible! I watched his games on TV, I really liked and like their team, I always support them. And then I realized that I would see him face to face, and he would be leading - of course, I was delighted!
If someone wants to work independently as an editor, then the database of questions will help you. You can invent your own questions, but this is not as simple as it might seem at first glance.
Item 3. Procedural Moments
VERY IMPORTANT! Be sure to develop and share the rules of the tournament! You can read, as it is written by others, and something to take as a basis. Be sure to decide who will monitor its implementation. You may need a jury of several people (preferably experienced players).
When everything is “settled” with the room, the rules and management, you can notify everyone, after which we start registering for the tournament. We act simply: in each of the offices we assign those responsible for collecting applications by e-mail and entering them into a general table on GoogleDocs. Each team comes up with a name and chooses a captain. General fun and tumult of fantasy begins at this moment - so, our list included “Conversion 146%”, “AnsabscrAibnem”, “Without Petrovich”, “Red bug”, “All Insider Drud” and the team of all offices, named after all three business centers "Kondraty Plazovich Leger". Looking ahead, I’ll say that it was the national team that won the 2017 Cup, and this is probably symbolic, because the PSC is a team game.
Hooray, finally running around with pieces of paper, the coordination of the budget, the purchase of prizes and the printing of forms, you can advance to the game!
Useful: Send participants in advance a reminder about the time and place of the tournament, with a map and photo of street view. If necessary, provide on-site navigation - type paper signs with arrows where to go, or install a live navigator that will guide guests.
So, everyone sat down, the familiar sounds of the overture of Richard Strauss died down, and the warm-up “Matrix” (the analogue of “His game”) began. As a result of the warm-up, my colleagues and I learned what the term “fresh wind” is, what nickname the Glasgow Rangers football team bears, and many other interesting facts.
The main tournament included 2 rounds of 12 questions of varying difficulty. Here are the opinions of the participants.
This time the questions were harder than in the First Cup a year ago?
Zhenya Ivanov, Technical Support Service Specialist, region Italy: It’s good that at least 13 questions were taken. Such teams will come next time. Last time there were teams that took quite a bit, and such ones most likely did not come.
Olga Slusarenko, technical writer: Yes, perhaps this is the case. The last time there were more teams, and in my opinion, not all were optimally prepared for the fact that you need to really concentrate, think quickly, find a solution, and not just for simple questions. Maybe someone was upset about the result. Although the guys who took 3rd place a year ago, immediately announced that they would take revenge next time! That is it, on the contrary, motivated them. This time the winners took 21 questions out of 24, this is a very good result.
Denis Rudenko, captain of the national team Veeam, head of the department QA: I think this time many questions were too easy. Maybe even next time it is better not to call collections at all. Give other players, teams to think, to fight. And send "collections", for example, to the jury.
Was it difficult to organize a tournament in your company?
Olga: I already had the experience of organizing the Cup last year, then yes, everything was for the first time, a lot of things that were not obvious to me, but we did it ... And then people constantly asked when the next game would be? It turned out exactly one year later. This time everything was much easier. Although ... I had to start all the contracts in the 1C system - this is working with 1C was the greatest difficulty for me.
Dasha: Yes, it was a little anxious, suddenly something didn’t bring, we don’t have time to do something, there was a slight rush and excitement before such a big event, suddenly something goes wrong ... But still I was very glad to take part not only as a player, but also as an organizer.
Denis: We are doing a good job to popularize the game. Maybe someone else will get carried away, will go to workouts, games. It motivates.
What do you remember the Cup Veeam-2017?
Dasha: Probably, the atmosphere was not some kind of nervous tension in each team, but there was such a friendly atmosphere. I remember, probably, funny versions of the answers - for example, there was such a question: “A desert snail spends the period from May to October in IT. Call HER. ” One of the teams replied that the "snail was in a coma." (I had the option that she was in the autumn depression (when she slept)), but we did not choose this version.)
Laughter was truly sincere, kind, with the joy of participation. I think that everything went very well, and I really liked the room, the beautiful design, and the organization, and the coffee break. Of course, the presenter Mikhail Skipsky, and gifts, prizes.
In the same teams Veeam, playing in the club "60 seconds", for these 2 years, new players have added color to the game team.
How did you get into the Veeam team?
Kirill Stetsko, technical support specialist, region of Spain: When we apply for a job, we are asked to fill out a questionnaire, there is a question about hobbies, I wrote that I was playing in ChGK. Then Dima came up to me, invited me to the game.
Kostya Lyaptsev, testing department engineer: Actually, I have been playing Mafia for a very long time, I can say, I was at the origins of the St. Petersburg community. And in the CPG, it also became interesting to try myself, and I sent an application first to participate in the internal tournament-2016. We conducted trainings, performed well - took 1st place. Probably, I managed to show myself well, and they invited me to play for the national team. At first I played for Veeam-2 in the Corporate League of the club “60 seconds”, now I already volunteer for the games in the Champions League.
Zhenya Ivanov: Initially, I worked in the renewals team ( license renewal ), but dreamed of working in the technical support department. Then teams on CPP were only created, there were few players. I played for Veeam-2 in the Corporate League, and my colleague and I came to the joint training sessions for the guys at Kondratievsky ( R & D, QA and TechSupport are on this platform ). There he met with the guys from the support, then talked with their team lead. Of course, in parallel, I was seriously preparing, because although I already had the skill of communicating with clients, I also needed a good understanding of technical issues. So the managers gave the go-ahead, and I finally went to support for the junior engineer position! That is, it can be said, the game in CPG helped me to fulfill my dream. Now I play for the first national team, and at work I grew up to be a senor, so it turned out to be just a Success Story :).
During these 2 years you have stepped forward and up the career ladder, you have new responsibilities, a new level of responsibility. How do you manage to find time and opportunity to play?
Dima Mordberg, team leader of the technical support team, region France: I have active calendar activity. No one can give me a meeting at this time :).
Denis: I have it this way now - the work will “eat” all the time I devote to it. That is, the question is to allocate as much as you need, for what you need, most important, and most important. And my children are still small, so there is generally little free time, and you are trying to squeeze something into some of its remnants - here the CPG is still squeezing.
Zhenya: I will say this: before going to support, I thought I was working a lot. Now I understand that all these previous years, I can say, rested! Because the life of the junior engineer support was really hard. Dima, for example, remembers very well how he came to pick me up, and I used to wait for the last minutes on some webex, asked: “Dima, please, another 5 minutes!” And then he helped me with working things so that I could free myself on time and go to the game. And now I already have the experience, and time management has become better, well, the duties are now more diverse - this is the training of newbies, and writing all sorts of articles, so the work with clients takes probably about a third of the time. So in general, it became, on the contrary, easier.
Part of the staff moved to the Czech Republic and now plays there. Some of you will soon also replace the St. Petersburg office in Prague. How do you see your future in a new place?
Denis: Probably, we should try to get out to another level gradually. I have an idea - you need to find teams from the sports CPG (there are not many of them there yet, 2-3), or try to organize and play your own. So we must continue to read, to train. And after all, someone is planning to return to St. Petersburg, and there will already be a new page, new teams, a new future ...
And what will the “experienced Prague citizen” say already? What is common and what is the difference between Petersburg and Prague CPG?
Ian Dimant, testing department engineer: Here, in the Czech Republic, there are 2 or 3 teams playing the sports CPG, and in Prague, the “Open League” games of the club “60 seconds” are held . 26 teams took part in her spring series. The difference from St. Petersburg games is that there can be up to 8 players in a team. And, of course, there is an excellent Czech beer here that goes well in between the rounds and after the game.
The game traditionally begins with the "Matrix", then 3 rounds of CPG, 10 questions each. For someone, maybe too easy, but I just right. Our team is called “Veeam_Software_cz”, in general we are playing quite well - in the spring series we took part in 5 games, of which 2 divided the first place. Here is one of the “prize podiums” of our small but proud branch:
I really hope that with the arrival of more guys from St. Petersburg, our squad will become stable, and the victories will be regular.
At the beginning of March, in the framework of the IT Challenge Championship (Olympics "for all kinds of things" among Peter's IT companies), the game "IT Brain Battle" was played. Naturally, the Veeam team also appeared on it. In general, our team has a difficult relationship with this tournament: in the first year of its holding, they were late with the application, then remained below the prize winners, although they showed a good result. This season really wanted to rehabilitate.
At the table in the conference hall of the Azimuth Hotel, the national team sat in full force and with a very serious attitude.
As it turned out, this was not always the case - after all, the package of questions, as the host himself warned, the same Mikhail Skipsky, “was tested on children,” and there was no need to rely on tricky answers. As a result, our experts did not have just 2 points to “gold”. The captain was upset, and everyone else felt about themselves what it means to stay a step away from victory. The second place, even with tasty prizes, flowers and medals, is not at all the same as the first. Therefore, on the photos we do not look very fun:
But there was no time to reflect on it - after all, at the beginning of May the team had to participate in the World Championship among amateur teams. There was less and less time for training outside of work, so I had to get in shape through games.
And here we are in the playing hall, where an hour before the matches of the Russian Sports Championship took place, and there all the strongest teams of the country played.
But even among the “lovers”, famous people continually flash: “here is the team of Elena Potanina“ Marshak Naczek ”, and here the team of the club“ 60 seconds ”led by its president Leonid Edlin. Here are representatives of Kazakhstan, Latvia, Israel, Sweden - a total of 46 teams, more than 270 participants. Led the tournament Master of the TV club "What? Where? When? ”Maxim Potashev, he was the editor of one of the tours.
During the two days of the championship, 6 rounds of 12 questions were played, and in two of them Veeam scored the most points. (The quality photo, of course, is bad - but it conveys the mood of the guys well after the won tour.)
Unfortunately, the not quite successful game in the first round left the team behind the line of winners. As a result, the guys in green T-shirts, having gained 48 points, took the 9th place in the overall standings and 4th in the corporate standings.
Probably to enter the top ten world teams - a good result?
Kirill: I have a little strange impressions of the tournament - I thought it’s not our level there, it will be difficult for us, but it turned out that we could and should win there. That is, we seemed to be playing normally, but the first round, for example, “merged "- and it is not clear why.
Denis: We can say, we stopped a step away from the third common place and from the first in the corporate competition, only 3 points were not enough. There, purely in my wrong choices, one could gain more. Two teams were a little stronger - that's all. And the thoughts “not our level” by default are not entirely correct. The level, after all, is also determined by thoughts. It really was the third place to take. And we played moments just fine, but in the sum, yes, it turned out moderately.
What do you think there are reserves for connoisseurs to grow?
Denis: One of the reserves, in order to win - you need to feel free to voice versions. Before the game, I regularly remind you: speak versions, and if you are not heard, repeat. Do not try to "bring" your version - this is the erroneous behavior of the player, but we are trying to work on it, correct it.
Dasha: Before the tournament, my team and I were going to a small training session, which we organized ourselves. It would be interesting and useful to organize general trainings for several teams, with a story, what roles can be in a team, what kind of plan there may be questions ... You can make Skype call or collect a brochure with useful tips, make trainings regular - that would be very cool !
Here is a post on Habré about how it all began . The story of the Veeam Cup in corporate public . And, of course, thanks and respects:
Until new games!
But today is not about that, but about how you can hold a tournament on "What? Where? When? ”In my company, what is the use of this national team, and how surprisingly the participant’s career can turn as a result.
')
Himself event manager
In fact, the people in our offices have a lot of what they play: there are special rooms for the kicker and table tennis, someone prefers chess and checkers, there are also fans of the table. But we decided to aim a bigger game. After all, the team of CPG needed fresh forces in connection with the departure of some players to the Czech Republic, moreover, more and more newcomers, telling at interviews about their hobbies, were called intellectual sport as well. In general, we thought and sat down to organize the Veeam Mind Cup.
I’ll just say that there were no professional event managers among us, so we approached this task, we can say, in an engineering way: we look at how it works - we isolate the components - we assemble it from identical parts, if necessary we “process it with a file” that is, we adapt for ourselves.
So, somewhere we look at how an offline game for an audience of several teams takes place. We fix what resources are involved and what processes are taking place. We pretend what preparatory actions will be needed, and who in our company is responsible for what (purchases, paperwork, mass mailings, etc.). Putting it all together and get the "layout" for the event. The following is a brief summary of the key points.
Item 1. Room: If you don’t have very many people, that is, 30 people (these are 5 teams), then you can play in the office - in the classroom, in a large meeting room, in the dining room, etc. As for us, this year, there were 13 teams from both St. Petersburg sites, which is more than 70 people, representatives of almost all departments. Therefore, we were puzzled by the rent of a spacious room and the organization of a coffee break. We quickly found a suitable conference room in a hotel not far from both offices. In theory, it is possible to arrange a rental in the House of Culture, in the House of Children's Art, or just in a cafe (for the first time we did so - we rented a cafeteria in our business center).
Important! The hall and the equipment must be preliminarily tested and provided for domestic trifles - for example, so that at the critical moment the batteries do not sit at the microphone, and the jury has where to put the laptop to work with the tournament table.
Item 2. Question editor and moderator: The next important thing is the selection of a package of questions, that is, the work of the editor, and the role of the moderator. Here we use our acquaintances for official purposes and - hurray! - like a year ago, the person and the
The bet on the star presenter in our case fully justifies itself:
Dasha Aksenova, project coordinator in one of the offices, secretary: I used to watch the game “What? Where? When? ”On TV, and I had a dream to send a question there. Later, while I was in school, I already had the experience of the game: we performed with the school team “Korzhi” at the city and regional “Brain-ring” tournaments and even won prizes.
When I learned that such a corporate game was being held in our company, I was very happy and interested, and when it turned out that Mikhail Skipsky would be the leader, for me it was just incredible! I watched his games on TV, I really liked and like their team, I always support them. And then I realized that I would see him face to face, and he would be leading - of course, I was delighted!
If someone wants to work independently as an editor, then the database of questions will help you. You can invent your own questions, but this is not as simple as it might seem at first glance.
Item 3. Procedural Moments
VERY IMPORTANT! Be sure to develop and share the rules of the tournament! You can read, as it is written by others, and something to take as a basis. Be sure to decide who will monitor its implementation. You may need a jury of several people (preferably experienced players).
- Prepare paper forms for answers - according to the number of teams, and a few more to the reserve.
- If you plan to use the microphone and / or turn on the music - assign the responsible for the sound.
- If among the colleagues there are those who know how to conduct reportage photography - great! When you can still capture for the history of the teamwork of the brain.
- Think of how to reward the winners. Yes, many small prizes are better than one big one. You can give prizes for the funniest answer, for the best team form, etc. etc.
When everything is “settled” with the room, the rules and management, you can notify everyone, after which we start registering for the tournament. We act simply: in each of the offices we assign those responsible for collecting applications by e-mail and entering them into a general table on GoogleDocs. Each team comes up with a name and chooses a captain. General fun and tumult of fantasy begins at this moment - so, our list included “Conversion 146%”, “AnsabscrAibnem”, “Without Petrovich”, “Red bug”, “All Insider Drud” and the team of all offices, named after all three business centers "Kondraty Plazovich Leger". Looking ahead, I’ll say that it was the national team that won the 2017 Cup, and this is probably symbolic, because the PSC is a team game.
Hooray, finally running around with pieces of paper, the coordination of the budget, the purchase of prizes and the printing of forms, you can advance to the game!
Useful: Send participants in advance a reminder about the time and place of the tournament, with a map and photo of street view. If necessary, provide on-site navigation - type paper signs with arrows where to go, or install a live navigator that will guide guests.
So, everyone sat down, the familiar sounds of the overture of Richard Strauss died down, and the warm-up “Matrix” (the analogue of “His game”) began. As a result of the warm-up, my colleagues and I learned what the term “fresh wind” is, what nickname the Glasgow Rangers football team bears, and many other interesting facts.
The main tournament included 2 rounds of 12 questions of varying difficulty. Here are the opinions of the participants.
This time the questions were harder than in the First Cup a year ago?
Zhenya Ivanov, Technical Support Service Specialist, region Italy: It’s good that at least 13 questions were taken. Such teams will come next time. Last time there were teams that took quite a bit, and such ones most likely did not come.
Olga Slusarenko, technical writer: Yes, perhaps this is the case. The last time there were more teams, and in my opinion, not all were optimally prepared for the fact that you need to really concentrate, think quickly, find a solution, and not just for simple questions. Maybe someone was upset about the result. Although the guys who took 3rd place a year ago, immediately announced that they would take revenge next time! That is it, on the contrary, motivated them. This time the winners took 21 questions out of 24, this is a very good result.
Denis Rudenko, captain of the national team Veeam, head of the department QA: I think this time many questions were too easy. Maybe even next time it is better not to call collections at all. Give other players, teams to think, to fight. And send "collections", for example, to the jury.
Was it difficult to organize a tournament in your company?
Olga: I already had the experience of organizing the Cup last year, then yes, everything was for the first time, a lot of things that were not obvious to me, but we did it ... And then people constantly asked when the next game would be? It turned out exactly one year later. This time everything was much easier. Although ... I had to start all the contracts in the 1C system - this is working with 1C was the greatest difficulty for me.
Dasha: Yes, it was a little anxious, suddenly something didn’t bring, we don’t have time to do something, there was a slight rush and excitement before such a big event, suddenly something goes wrong ... But still I was very glad to take part not only as a player, but also as an organizer.
Denis: We are doing a good job to popularize the game. Maybe someone else will get carried away, will go to workouts, games. It motivates.
What do you remember the Cup Veeam-2017?
Dasha: Probably, the atmosphere was not some kind of nervous tension in each team, but there was such a friendly atmosphere. I remember, probably, funny versions of the answers - for example, there was such a question: “A desert snail spends the period from May to October in IT. Call HER. ” One of the teams replied that the "snail was in a coma." (I had the option that she was in the autumn depression (when she slept)), but we did not choose this version.)
Laughter was truly sincere, kind, with the joy of participation. I think that everything went very well, and I really liked the room, the beautiful design, and the organization, and the coffee break. Of course, the presenter Mikhail Skipsky, and gifts, prizes.
Who is "new" in the team?
In the same teams Veeam, playing in the club "60 seconds", for these 2 years, new players have added color to the game team.
How did you get into the Veeam team?
Kirill Stetsko, technical support specialist, region of Spain: When we apply for a job, we are asked to fill out a questionnaire, there is a question about hobbies, I wrote that I was playing in ChGK. Then Dima came up to me, invited me to the game.
Kostya Lyaptsev, testing department engineer: Actually, I have been playing Mafia for a very long time, I can say, I was at the origins of the St. Petersburg community. And in the CPG, it also became interesting to try myself, and I sent an application first to participate in the internal tournament-2016. We conducted trainings, performed well - took 1st place. Probably, I managed to show myself well, and they invited me to play for the national team. At first I played for Veeam-2 in the Corporate League of the club “60 seconds”, now I already volunteer for the games in the Champions League.
Zhenya Ivanov: Initially, I worked in the renewals team ( license renewal ), but dreamed of working in the technical support department. Then teams on CPP were only created, there were few players. I played for Veeam-2 in the Corporate League, and my colleague and I came to the joint training sessions for the guys at Kondratievsky ( R & D, QA and TechSupport are on this platform ). There he met with the guys from the support, then talked with their team lead. Of course, in parallel, I was seriously preparing, because although I already had the skill of communicating with clients, I also needed a good understanding of technical issues. So the managers gave the go-ahead, and I finally went to support for the junior engineer position! That is, it can be said, the game in CPG helped me to fulfill my dream. Now I play for the first national team, and at work I grew up to be a senor, so it turned out to be just a Success Story :).
During these 2 years you have stepped forward and up the career ladder, you have new responsibilities, a new level of responsibility. How do you manage to find time and opportunity to play?
Dima Mordberg, team leader of the technical support team, region France: I have active calendar activity. No one can give me a meeting at this time :).
Denis: I have it this way now - the work will “eat” all the time I devote to it. That is, the question is to allocate as much as you need, for what you need, most important, and most important. And my children are still small, so there is generally little free time, and you are trying to squeeze something into some of its remnants - here the CPG is still squeezing.
Zhenya: I will say this: before going to support, I thought I was working a lot. Now I understand that all these previous years, I can say, rested! Because the life of the junior engineer support was really hard. Dima, for example, remembers very well how he came to pick me up, and I used to wait for the last minutes on some webex, asked: “Dima, please, another 5 minutes!” And then he helped me with working things so that I could free myself on time and go to the game. And now I already have the experience, and time management has become better, well, the duties are now more diverse - this is the training of newbies, and writing all sorts of articles, so the work with clients takes probably about a third of the time. So in general, it became, on the contrary, easier.
Part of the staff moved to the Czech Republic and now plays there. Some of you will soon also replace the St. Petersburg office in Prague. How do you see your future in a new place?
Denis: Probably, we should try to get out to another level gradually. I have an idea - you need to find teams from the sports CPG (there are not many of them there yet, 2-3), or try to organize and play your own. So we must continue to read, to train. And after all, someone is planning to return to St. Petersburg, and there will already be a new page, new teams, a new future ...
And what will the “experienced Prague citizen” say already? What is common and what is the difference between Petersburg and Prague CPG?
Ian Dimant, testing department engineer: Here, in the Czech Republic, there are 2 or 3 teams playing the sports CPG, and in Prague, the “Open League” games of the club “60 seconds” are held . 26 teams took part in her spring series. The difference from St. Petersburg games is that there can be up to 8 players in a team. And, of course, there is an excellent Czech beer here that goes well in between the rounds and after the game.
The game traditionally begins with the "Matrix", then 3 rounds of CPG, 10 questions each. For someone, maybe too easy, but I just right. Our team is called “Veeam_Software_cz”, in general we are playing quite well - in the spring series we took part in 5 games, of which 2 divided the first place. Here is one of the “prize podiums” of our small but proud branch:
I really hope that with the arrival of more guys from St. Petersburg, our squad will become stable, and the victories will be regular.
“There is no place except the first!”
At the beginning of March, in the framework of the IT Challenge Championship (Olympics "for all kinds of things" among Peter's IT companies), the game "IT Brain Battle" was played. Naturally, the Veeam team also appeared on it. In general, our team has a difficult relationship with this tournament: in the first year of its holding, they were late with the application, then remained below the prize winners, although they showed a good result. This season really wanted to rehabilitate.
At the table in the conference hall of the Azimuth Hotel, the national team sat in full force and with a very serious attitude.
As it turned out, this was not always the case - after all, the package of questions, as the host himself warned, the same Mikhail Skipsky, “was tested on children,” and there was no need to rely on tricky answers. As a result, our experts did not have just 2 points to “gold”. The captain was upset, and everyone else felt about themselves what it means to stay a step away from victory. The second place, even with tasty prizes, flowers and medals, is not at all the same as the first. Therefore, on the photos we do not look very fun:
But there was no time to reflect on it - after all, at the beginning of May the team had to participate in the World Championship among amateur teams. There was less and less time for training outside of work, so I had to get in shape through games.
And here we are in the playing hall, where an hour before the matches of the Russian Sports Championship took place, and there all the strongest teams of the country played.
But even among the “lovers”, famous people continually flash: “here is the team of Elena Potanina“ Marshak Naczek ”, and here the team of the club“ 60 seconds ”led by its president Leonid Edlin. Here are representatives of Kazakhstan, Latvia, Israel, Sweden - a total of 46 teams, more than 270 participants. Led the tournament Master of the TV club "What? Where? When? ”Maxim Potashev, he was the editor of one of the tours.
During the two days of the championship, 6 rounds of 12 questions were played, and in two of them Veeam scored the most points. (The quality photo, of course, is bad - but it conveys the mood of the guys well after the won tour.)
Unfortunately, the not quite successful game in the first round left the team behind the line of winners. As a result, the guys in green T-shirts, having gained 48 points, took the 9th place in the overall standings and 4th in the corporate standings.
Probably to enter the top ten world teams - a good result?
Kirill: I have a little strange impressions of the tournament - I thought it’s not our level there, it will be difficult for us, but it turned out that we could and should win there. That is, we seemed to be playing normally, but the first round, for example, “merged "- and it is not clear why.
Denis: We can say, we stopped a step away from the third common place and from the first in the corporate competition, only 3 points were not enough. There, purely in my wrong choices, one could gain more. Two teams were a little stronger - that's all. And the thoughts “not our level” by default are not entirely correct. The level, after all, is also determined by thoughts. It really was the third place to take. And we played moments just fine, but in the sum, yes, it turned out moderately.
What do you think there are reserves for connoisseurs to grow?
Denis: One of the reserves, in order to win - you need to feel free to voice versions. Before the game, I regularly remind you: speak versions, and if you are not heard, repeat. Do not try to "bring" your version - this is the erroneous behavior of the player, but we are trying to work on it, correct it.
Dasha: Before the tournament, my team and I were going to a small training session, which we organized ourselves. It would be interesting and useful to organize general trainings for several teams, with a story, what roles can be in a team, what kind of plan there may be questions ... You can make Skype call or collect a brochure with useful tips, make trainings regular - that would be very cool !
Instead of an afterword
Here is a post on Habré about how it all began . The story of the Veeam Cup in corporate public . And, of course, thanks and respects:
- The team of experts thanks Veeam Software and personally Alexander Shirmanov (@sysmetic) for the financial and organizational support of our participation in all these tournaments.
- The author thanks the members of the team of Veeam experts, as well as Alexey Sobolev personally (@ bw3d), IT-Dominanta, as well as the 60 seconds intellectual club ( http://club60sec.ru/ ) and Maxim Morozov for the photos provided.
Until new games!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/330914/
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