Last night I posted some questions on the MikePortnoy.com forum (Dream Theater's drummer) and the main Dream Theater discussion forum. I've been listening to the contest entries and I continue to be impressed musically and fascinated musicologically. Basically I wanted to get some idea of how the composers felt about creating their contest entry, and how they went about interpreting the contest skeleton. Had a few responses so far. Here are the threads:

DreamTheater.net

MikePortnoy.com