His Memory Keeps Getting Better - Congrats Again USA Memory Champ Nelson Dellis

Posted: 26 Mar 2012

On Saturday March 24, Nelson Dellis defeated seven other semi-finalists to win top honors in the USA Memory Championship – for the second straight year! This was no small feat: Mental athletes (the contestants) competed on their abilities to memorize a list of hundreds of random numbers, the order of two shuffled decks of cards, 99 new names and faces – and an unpublished 50-line poem.

Following his win, Fusion-io ambassador Nelson took a few minutes to answer three quick questions for us.

Fusion-io: What were the highlights of this year's competition?
Nelson: Well, I won every single event by a pretty comfortable margin – not stressing about standings probably helped me stay calm and focused. I broke the US record (my own record) for memorizing numbers: 303 digits in 5 minutes. In the final round I memorized 104 playing cards in perfect order!

Fusion-io: What do you think helped you win?
Nelson: Hard work, for sure. I practiced for many, many hours, and it made the competition feel like a breeze!

Fusion-io: Anything you'd like to share with your Fusion-io fans?
Nelson: Just that I hope they realize the parallels between what I've been doing with the mental software in my mind and what Fusion-io is doing with memory for data centers. Also, keep an eye out for me on Leno sometime in the next coming weeks!

Fusion-io will soon be launching a video series with Nelson in which he shares his techniques for improving our memories. Stay tuned for details!

In the meantime, you can catch some of the recent media coverage on Nelson, his astounding memory, and Climb for Memory, his charitable foundation that's raising money for Alzheimer's Research. Check out the stories by clicking on the links below:

Spurred by Love and Fear, Memory Champ Aims to Inspire (CNN.com)

How to Memorize a Deck of Cards (And Other Brain-Training Tricks) (ABCNews.com)

U.S. Memory Champion on How to Remember Names, Faces and Where You Put Your Keys (Forbes.com)