When I walked through the Open House on Friday on the second floor of Razer Hall, I saw many cool exhibits. From a large robot drone being tested on for attachments (they are going to put a crane like arm on it soon) to a demo for a VR co-op shooter. The variety of project being worked on were very intriguing. Of course, I too had was part of a group displaying their project here, but I will not talk much about that directly. The Tandy School of Computer Science Open House was an exhibition of all the major projects that students in TU’s Computer Science track were working on, most booths were from the various different groups of the schools senior software projects. However some, like the aforementioned drone, and an VR firefighting simulation demo were from other programs. During the roughly hour or so of the Open House people from the local community could walk through Razor Hall and see what exactly we were working on at TU. As well as this, food and drinks were provided so that people did not have to skip dinner to attend the event
Unfortunately, the space itself provided a few limitations to the experience. Instead of a large open floorspace like a conference hall, the open house took up the central hallway of Razor Hall, as well as the computer lab. The tight corridor-like space may have provided a closer more personal experience, but it also caused a bit of a traffic issue, as people standing to look at a single groups work could very well block off the hallways for people trying to pass by. And the fact that three groups, including my own, were in a classroom instead of the main through line of the open house, behind a booth at that, meant that most people passed by our projects without even looking into the room, to say the least of checking out what we were working on in here. Most of the booths themselves seemed to be pretty hurriedly put together, which is understandable given that most groups displaying here works were instead focused on their actual products and putting together demo videos, but it still lends a sense of people not at all prepared for this event you may have gone out of your way to attend. Fortunately, none of these issues are unresolvable. If the event were to be given a different, larger space, such as the Chouteau room in the Student Union, this would solve both the flow problem and the fact that people were relegated into what was basically a side room. The different groups could have larger displays and not block each other as the visitors passed through. of course, this would introduce the issues of moving the required infrastructure such as transporting certain computers and VR set ups as necessary, but it is food for thought. As for the booth preparation. I feel like the groups could be given more time to specifically prepare for the open house. It felt more like an afterthought than a central event that could provide a lot of critical networking for the senior students of the college.
All that being said, the open house is still a very cool experience and good for networking. Plenty of TU graduates came around last Friday and even if you aren’t looking for anything particular, seeing the different projects and demos could provide plenty of inspiration for your own ideas, and maybe spark your own interest in the college.
Cover image taken from official promotional material
Aidan Pohl's Game Design Blog 