By Chloe Williams
AI: Manufactured Minds

I was introduced to ThinkQuest through Tina, our Assistant Coach, who lives close by in my home town of Adelaide, Australia. She invited me to join this team of fantastic people from all around the world: Jim (our Primary Coach), Amelia, Chris, and Pat from America, and team captain, Kishore, from India. I thought that the challenge of working with a team from all corners of the world to create an educational website was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

My role on the team was a mixture of anything and everything that came my way. My main job was to create the scripts that Chris and Pat used to produce the animations and interactive activities. This involved reading each article thoroughly and trying to come up with something unique that MM-19, our robot mascot, could be doing to highlight the content of a particular page. I also worked with Amelia to check that the articles were written and edited to our expectations and that all references and citations were consistent throughout the site. We also made sure to look at the site from a visitor's point of view; although our team had in-depth knowledge of the topic (artificial intelligence), a lot of people wouldn't be able to understand the "jargon." Our content needed to be informative and accurate without losing the interest of the reader.

Communication was the biggest barrier our team had to overcome, but we all learned to be flexible. We placed our work on a forum, so the rest of the team could see what we had achieved each week, and held weekly team meetings over instant messenger. Time zones needed to be crossed in order for this to work, and there was always someone who had to be up early or stay up late. Our team motto quickly became "Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening everybody!"

For the course of eight months, ThinkQuest pretty much became my number one priority, and it was a challenge to balance my team responsibilities while studying full time at university, working, and participating in other extracurricular activities. I was pleased to know that my teammates were in the same situation as me--sleep-deprived for about a week leading up to the deadlines! I had never been involved with ThinkQuest before, and it turned out to be completely different than how I imagined it would be. The most important thing that I gained is the international friendships. Our team was multicultural, but collectively we were intent on producing the best website we could with the skills that each of us put in. The whole process has been an experience that I am proud to have been a part of and will always remember.