Tseng and his Vancouver team, along with representatives from participating states, provinces and countries in the world finals marched Wednesday night around Breslin Center for the parade before the order was issued for the competition to officially begin.

Almost 8,000 students will compete Thursday through Saturday in the Odyssey of the Mind 2010 World Finals, a creative problem-solving competition, which is being hosted by MSU.

The students, their coaches and families have traveled from the U.S. and 13 countries across the world, totaling about 16,000 people, said Jennifer Veale, spokeswoman for Odyssey of the Mind.

There are 813 teams competing in the World Finals — 63 more than last year, Veale said.

“I know there’s more people,” she said. “I think a lot of people like coming to Michigan.”

The logistics

Odyssey of the Mind is an education program that presents participants with problems they must solve creatively. The problems are presented in multiple formats, including acting, writing and construction.

Tony Birkmeier, a 2005 MSU alumnus and tournament co-director for the world finals, said there are four divisions, which roughly equate to elementary school, middle school, high school and college-aged students.

Teams of up to seven students who have won their regional competitions advance in their division and specific problem, Birkmeier said. Since the beginning of the 2009-10 school year, teams have been working on a maximum 8-minute performance as a solution to one of five problems, Birkmeier said.

“At world finals, these are the best, the brightest students from all around the world who are perceived to be crowned champion in their division,” Birkmeier said.

Birkmeier started an Odyssey of the Mind team while he was at MSU and was active in the decision to have the world finals at MSU in 2007.

“The biggest thing in Odyssey of the Mind is creativity,” he said.

“I can’t go and say this is what judges are looking for because quite honestly, we don’t know what we’re looking for. It’s amazing to see how the things that come out of the bright minds that are there.”

Odyssey of the Minds’s State Association director Tina Allen said the world finals were chosen to be hosted at MSU this year because of space requirements for the competitions.

“We used to go to (the) University of Colorado at Boulder and that became too small of a venue,” she said. “They were looking for a university that was the right size and they had a really good experience in 2007 (at MSU).”

Allen said next year’s world finals will be held at the University of Maryland, then Iowa State University and back to MSU in 2013.

“It’s a lot of activity and energy, you can feel it when you’re walking around,” she said.
Laurin Gierman, the sales manager for MSU’s Spartan Hospitality Group, has been responsible for coordinating the housing logistics of Odyssey of the Mind, since students and their coaches stay in MSU residence halls. Gierman also is coordinating a group of MSU translators to work with international groups.

“It takes months of preparation and many, many university partners,” she said.

About 450 judges traveled to East Lansing to volunteer as officials for the problems.

“This organization has a whole bunch of people who are so dedicated to it that we have more volunteers than we could ever take as officials,” Birkmeier said.

The experience

The process of getting ready for the competition has been a hectic scramble, including more practices than usual, said Adam Paruk, a competitor from Gdynia, Poland.

Paruk is working alongside his team of high school students and said they have been practicing their solution to their problem until the day they left for the U.S. and shipped their props to East Lansing.

Although the teams come to win, outside of the competition, Paruk said he plans on making friends.

“It’s going to be great,” he said. “It’s more about meeting people and coming than winning.”

For some international teams, the world finals mark their first trip to the U.S., such as 14-year-old Tracy Chan. Chan is a member of Hong Kong’s team, which is competing in division two after winning the Hong Kong regional competition.

“It is very different from Hong Kong,” Chan said of the U.S. “Hong Kong is very fast, (but) people work slowly (in the U.S.). We can relax here.”

Ann Bell of Melbourne, Fla., volunteered at the information table in the International Center, where teams registered on Tuesday and Wednesday. Bell has been involved in Odyssey of the Mind for more than 20 years since her daughter was a participant.

“I have seen through the years how it changes kids’ lives,” Bell said. “They make lifelong friends.”

Allen said she is proud of the 31 Michigan teams who are competing and said she has seen countless benefits for students in the program in addition to fostering creativity. Allen’s children participated in Odyssey of the Mind when they were students, and she said it taught them life skills that are difficult to learn.

“They learned that they could do things and fail and still pick themselves back up,” she said. “They learned to trust their own judgment.”

The teams perform twice during the competition: one practiced and one spontaneous problem, Allen said.
“They go into a room and get some kind of a problem, no one has any idea what they’re going to get,” she said. “That helps them think on their feet.”