The 2007 Spelman Regional Computer Science Olympiad of the Mind conference was hosted at Norfolk State University. Located in Norfolk, Virginia the Conference was held in the Robinson Technology Center Auditorium on Saturday November 10, 2007 from 8:00 until 7:22pm. There were four undergraduates representing Elizabeth City State University Computer Science: senior Kaiem L. Frink, Computer Science junior Jamika Balktrop and two Computer Science freshmen Deanna Zellars and Vernon Brown Jr. The ECSU team coach was Mr. Lee Hayden. This competition consisted of nine other teams. Some of those in attendance were North Carolina A&T State University, Hampton University, and Old Dominion University. The winners will be provided travel support to National conference at Spelman University in Atlanta Georgia.

Before the competition began there was a brief introduction from the Dean of Science and Technology at Norfolk State University, Dr. Sandra J. Deloatch . Christopher Haynesan, alumnus of Norfolk State University, a member of BSM Dev Support & Quality Assurance Managers, and two Ph.D. students were the judges for the competition. The first competition was in the form of a Jeopardy style question and answer session with one buzzer for all four team members. The teams would receive two points for correct answers if the question was a bonus question, one point for normal correct responses, and minus one point for each wrong answer.

A cryptography session was also conducted. There were six cryptography questions that needed to be decoded. In this instance there were no hints or guides for decoding these scripts. After this session finished we broke and went for an hour lunch where I converse with Dr. Graham who Jerome Mitchell and myself met at ADMI 2005 in Rincon, Puerto Rico.

The robotics competition consisted of reading the robotics requirements and specifications. The team would have to program the robot using Lego Bots X which would activate three of the four sensors on the robot. There was a light sensor, sound sensor, motion activated sensor, and touch sensor. The team would go individually to look at the course the robot would have to perform on. Our robot had to travel a specific distance pick up the ball using the touch sensor. Then the robot needed to utilize the light sensors to determine the color of the ball. If the ball was blue the robot was to go to the right, to another destination and drop the ball off and then return to the original home stage. The sound sensor activation was optional but was required as part of the robot. The robot would do the opposite if the ball was red and return to the home stage.

This regional conference was sponsored by Zell whose owner is a Raymond Thriller, a trustee of Norfolk State University. An SAIC corporate representatives in attendance were Keith Moore and IBM representatives Christopher Haynes and Victor Brown. IBM sponsored writing pens with links to their academic department. Norfolk State University placed first in Robotics and Old Dominion University placed first in Hardware/Software. Elizabeth City State University placed fourth out of the nine schools present.