October 22, 2017 TCO17 Welcome Reception!

TCO17 has officially started! Last evening we had the Welcome Reception and the parade of the finalists. Competitors from all over the world came to Dig at BNMC, some with their partners/ families or just alone. There were many veterans but also many new members. It’s quite awesome to see how people change over the time (little Akinwale was here too!).

Conversations sparkled between members and one could see the joy from their eyes when they talked about RUXes and LUXes, development technologies or Algo/Marathon Match problems. The online experience was brought to life here.
For the first time at a TCO, we had the Chicken Wings contest, where 5 local restaurants came with their special and delicious chicken wings here and they let the community decide who was the was the best. Turns out, number 1,Curly’s was the winner and got the crazy Chicken Wing Trophy! Among other food types and drinks we also had the custom Topcoder IPAle-gorithm beer.

The evening rolled with a great introduction video made by Cendhika about the community and Buffalo. Then Nick Castillo, our community manager, welcomed everyone. Adam Morehead came after, who brought amazing data about the work community did last year. Did you know that last year we ran 2,500 challenges and the prizes totalled a $2.8 million dollars? Big thanks went to TCO sponsors and especially BNMC who hosted the event.

The evening continued with Sam Marrazzo, the Chief Innovation Officer at BNMC, who brought TCO to Buffalo and was really excited about the entire event and having this event happening in his city as Buffalo is growing fast as a technology center. He was followed by the Honorable Byron Brown, the mayor of Buffalo, who gave a speech about the facilities this city offers for those who’d like to move in and about the latest.

Once that was closed the presentations of the finalists for all tracks has rolled up in cheers and applauses. Last but not least, we had our TCO queen, who made this event possible, get a round of applause for all the hard work and was followed Shean Hidinger, from BNMC .

Everyone had food and drinks and did lots of pictures together. Sam Marrazzo invited members from all the countries to take pictures with him as well as staff and we all had a great time!


Now it’s time to turn on all engines! Good luck to all our competitors!
Check the Welcome Reception video here:
https://tco17.topcoder.com/videos/
Check out the photos as we keep adding them:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/53993064@N03/sets/72157687624201200
https://www.flickr.com/photos/53993064@N03/albums
Follow TCO17:
https://tco17.topcoder.com/blog/