Welcome to RITC2008! As participants for this year’s competition, this area of the website is dedicated to you and your needs. We hope you have a great time, and we look forward to seeing you in February.

Requirements

Clothing

The competition itself is a professional business competition, so we expect our participants to dress in either business casual or business formal attire. The exception is for the two outcry events where competitors often find it easier to navigate and find each other in the pit if they wear distinguishing clothing or uniforms (such as noticeable hats, jerseys, or trading jackets). Also, please note, that the average temperature in Toronto in February is -8 degrees Celsius/15 Fahrenheit. We suggest that you bring appropriate winter clothing, and that you check the weather forecasts before you leave for the competition.

Tech Specs

Laptop: Every team is required to bring at least one laptop. We request that all laptops meet the MINIMUM requirements that are as follows:

1. Pentium 4 1.5 Ghz (or equivalent)
2. Windows XP (or Vista)
3. 512 Megabytes of RAM
4. 802.11a or 802.11b or 802.11g wireless network adapter
5. Microsoft Office (Version 2003 or higher)
6. Anti Virus Software with updated Virus Definitions
7. .NET 2.0 Framework and Rotman Interactive Trader
8. Macromedia Flash Plug-in
9. English language capabilities.


Please install and test the Rotman Interactive Trader, which is available at http://rit.rotman.utoronto.ca. This program is necessary to the competition as it is the trading platform that will be used for the Sales and Trader case and BP Commodities Trading case. Stress-test situations will be run in the weeks before the competition so that you can test your laptops ability to handle high-volume trading situations (Trading with 80 people is much more taxing on your laptop than trading with 10 people due to the higher frequency of trades).

Internet Connectivity will be set up for teams once they reach campus. This process will occur after your team has registered and Rotman Staff will be stationed to help set your laptop up. Your system is expected to be functioning properly, be free of viruses and other harmful content. If such content is found on your computer, your laptop will be removed automatically by the University of Toronto network.

The capabilities, effectiveness, and compatibility of the laptop is the team’s responsibility. The competition will not provide replacement laptops if your team’s laptop experiences technical difficulties or a failure. The competition will provide a wireless personalized access code to each and every team and they will be able to use that for the duration of the competition. In the case of bringing multiple laptops, the team will need to alternate use of the wireless access code. During all trading cases, only 1 laptop can be used regardless of how many a team brings. It is highly recommended that teams bring a back-up laptop. If for some reason your laptop does not work, is lost, stolen, or for some other reason cannot be used in the competition, your team will have the disadvantage of not having a laptop to use for the cases. The competition will not change event configurations to accommodate you.