I believe 2004 was the turning point when the audience was very engaged -- that was the first year spectating was lots of fun, 34-101 was packed, cheering all a

I believe 2004 was the turning point when the audience was very engaged -- that was the first year spectating was lots of fun, 34-101 was packed, cheering all around, etc. In 2001 and 2002, spectating was not fun at all, partly due to technical issues mid-contest. To make things more entertaining, Prof. Daniel Jackson asked Guy Steele to get up and talk about the new features in Java 1.4, and discuss when generics in java.util would be fully supported. Not joking....