TechED Idols Contest Wave 2

During Wednesday's lunch, the second round of the 2006 TechED Idols Contest completed with another wave of three speakers.

The first one, an Italian student (part of the 2006 Imagine Cup winner team), showed a very nice demo of a Windows Sidebar Gadget hooked up to a Bluetooth heartrate monitor. He had a bad Italian accent that made him difficult to understand, and somehow none of the speakers have managed to stay within the proposes five minutes.

The next one, a UK guy living in Austria spoke so fast that nobody must have been able to keep up with him (even the native speakers). Then again, explaining ASP.NET AJAX extenders in five minutes is quite a challenge on itself. He definitely lost the group rightaway.

The third one, some East-European guy could barely speak English, so not worth mentioning. I'm astonished he actually came through the initial submission selection. But the fourth one, somebody who gained access through one of the wildcards that were made available to the audience, was not bad at all. He was a Romanian guy that presented (in good English) some stuff about user interface design.

Overall, this wave was not up to the standards set by the raw presentation power displayed during the yesterday's first wave. To my surprise, the Italian guy won this wave. I'm now starting to doubt what really excites the judge...