The Next Up competition day on April 3 is taking shape!

There are now six weeks to go before 50 excited 14- and 15-year-olds present their clever solutions to the cases they have been working on for two months. They will do so in front of a jury consisting of the case companies (Sogeti, Ericsson, IBM, King and Sveriges Television), headmasters, IT entrepreneurs and youth profiles. The students are accompanied by teachers and team leaders from the DataTjej network, who help them keep their stomach butterflies under control.

We are talking about the final of Next Up, which takes place on April 3 in "Ärvinge Affärsteater", on the ground floor of Kronborgsgränd 1 in Kista. The property owner, Atrium Ljungberg, is very generously providing both premises and dinner - premises that enable not only the students' case presentations but also a number of other activities, with the participation of, among others, the Department of Computer and Systems Science at Stockholm University and the two upper secondary schools SSIS and YBC.

We are now up to 23 stakeholders - member companies and others - contributing in one way or another to the competition. The full list is available at http://nextup.se/partners. We welcome more to participate, please contact the undersigned at fredrik.vonessen@almega.se.

The competition day in brief:

9-12: The ten schools present their cases - two presentations per school. To be done in the "competition area" cf. sketch. Parallel activities in the light court and activity area.

At 12 noon, the three finalists are announced. They will be given a new case which they will have two hours to solve.

15:00: Three consecutive final presentations in the Light Court, webcast.

17:00: Winner announced, followed by a gala dinner for competitors and partners.