·      Length of presentations: Student teams should prepare presentations of no longer than 15 minutes in length.  This will assure that judges have ample time to ask questions and complete their scoring before the next team presents.  Please practice your presentations.  You may also want to realize that your audiences between the day and night will be different. Judges for the daytime presentation will have read your complete business plan and be much more informed than the night time audience who will have only read your one-page Executive Summary and seen your presentation.

·      Questions: Team shall have a total of 25 minutes in front of the judges for both the morning and evening (for Finalist Round teams) presentations. Since you have 15 minutes for your presentation, this leaves 10 minutes for question and answers.  Teams going beyond their 15 minute presentation allocation will be able to answer fewer questions from the judges.  Questions will end after the total 25 minutes for presentation and questions has expired.

·      Non-confidentiality:  All sessions of the competition, including but not limited to oral presentations and question/answer sessions, are open to the public at large.  Any and all of these sessions may be broadcast to interested persons through media which may include radio, television and the Internet.   Any data or information discussed or divulged in public sessions by entrants should be considered information that could possibly enter the public realm, and entrants should not assume any right of confidentiality in any data or information discussed or divulged or presented in these sessions.

Due to the nature of the competition, we are not able to ask judges, reviewers, staff or the audience to agree to or sign non-disclosure statements.  However, the John Ruffatto Business Plan Competition staff will make every effort to limit distribution of business plans only to judges of the competition.  All presentations are open to the general public, and some presentations may be videotaped. Attendance by media personnel is expected.

Copyrights & Permissions:  BPC requires that if a team uses copy written materials and/or images from a third-party in their presentation or business plan, then they must obtain permission and are authorized by the owners to use this material in advance.