Imagine Cup 2013

Imagine Cup 2013 – Lebanon Local Finals

Laila Abu-Dahi — Tue, 14 May 2013 20:16:19 +0000

Imagine Cup 2013 Lebanon finals took place over a period of two days filled with excitement. The event saw more than 90 participating students and 30 different teams from 10 universities from Lebanon.

On Monday, 15th of April 2013, on a full day packed with enthusiasm, all participating teams were invited to present their projects over two rounds to a panel of judges including business leaders, academic professors and representatives of Lebanese media and NGOs.

Overview of the top 6 projects presented

After Round 1 where all teams were done presenting their projects, the judges went on to decide which six teams out of 30 are to qualify to Round 2. It certainly was a hard decision due to the great quality of projects.

Team Superheroes, World Citizenship – AUB
Carpooling – the effective way to overcome traffic congestion and reducing the amount of CO2 emitted. Creating an organized and interactive portal on Windows 8 that connects people together to share a ride.

Team MF, Games – AUB
Developing an interactive game on Windows Phone that targets and provides the chance to educate the younger generations of Lebanese immigrants their mother language (Arabic).

Team E-Step, Innovation – BAU
Invenio is a new technology used to teach students at schools and other institutes, programming & electronic skills in a new, simple and effective manner.

Team Lets Volunteer, World Citizenship – BAU
A portal on Windows Phone to connect NGOs and volunteers, where volunteers can follow a number of NGOs and get involved in all the available activities and events.

Team Desert Noodles, Games – AUB
A 3D action/puzzle game set in the future where humanity no longer exists. The planet is ruled by machines and nature is trying to fight back. The sole duty is to balance the planet between nature and machines.

Team Keystroke, Innovation – RHU & BAU
A new biometric modality allowing to recognize users based on the way they type a password by calculating many different factors to provide a secure login by preventing attackers in possession of the credentials from logging in.

The Results Ceremony

On Tuesday, 23^rd of April 2013, Microsoft Lebanon held a results ceremony to announce the winners and the National Team for Imagine Cup 2013 Lebanon finals. The day started off with Hoda Younan, Country Manager welcoming the teams and guests while discussing the future of IT Industry and the role that the youth must play for building a better future. Amongst the guests were Sponsors, IT Professionals, Judges, MS Employees, students and their professors.

And the winners are:

Team Lets Volunteer – World Citizenship

Team MF – Games

Team Keystroke – Innovation

The three teams demonstrated and demoed their projects to the audience showing off the great products they built over. Team Keystroke also won the title of the National team, thus earning a chance to represent their home country at the Imagine Cup 2013 Worldwide Finals to be held in July in St. Petersburg, Russia.

By the end of the day, the teams received their prizes consisting of trophies, Nokia Lumia 920 devices, travel and accommodation vouchers from the sponsor KurbanTravel and a free 1 month and 3 months incubation program voucher from Berytech.

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Follow the Official Microsoft Imagine Cup Channels:
Website: http://www.imaginecup.com/
Blog: http://www.imaginecup.com/Main/News
Twitter: https://twitter.com/imaginecup
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/microsoftimaginecup
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/imaginecup/

See more content from the MSPSMT online!
Blog: http://www.icsocialmediateam.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MSPSMT2013
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mspsmt
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/wwmsp
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mspsmt

Created by: Laila Abudahi, #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013 – South Africa Local Finals

MSP_MVP — Tue, 14 May 2013 18:17:20 +0000

An innovative tool that allows businesses to see what people are saying about them on social media platforms has won three University of Johannesburg computer science students and their supervisor a place in the Worldwide Finals of Imagine Cup 2013, a global technology competition in Russia later this year.

Dr Ian Ellefsen, Jan van Niekerk, Lorenzo Boccetti and Merrick Bengis beat off the challenge of South Africa’s top computer programming students to win the local leg of Imagine Cup, a Microsoft-sponsored technology competition which pits the world’s best student programmers against each other. As a part of their prize, the winning team will be jetting off to St. Petersburg in July to compete in the global finals.

Presently in its eleventh year, Microsoft Imagine Cup challenges the world’s best student programmers to create applications to solve real-world problems. More than 1.65 million students across the globe have participated in Imagine Cup during the past decade. Locally, this year’s Imagine Cup South Africa finals held on 11-12 April, 2013 drew 78 entries from universities across the country. Sponsors included the Department of Science and Technology/ CSIR Meraka Institute, BBD and Nokia.

The winning solution, SentiMeter, uses the power of affordable cloud computing to let businesses of any size track what is being said about them on social media platforms at very low cost and analyse their brand sentiment.

SentiMeter was born a few years ago at the start of the social media boom, and the team realised that brands needed a way to take charge of what is being said about them – or face brand decimation.

“We believe our platform will save companies not only in rands, but also in reputation management. The award means so much to us. As the tool is currently in Beta phase, we can now continue to grow our start-up even further.” - Van Niekerk, winning team member

The tool combines sentiment analysis derived from an identified location anywhere in the world and various social platforms to provide companies with detailed reports, trends and insights, says Van Niekerk.

The head of Microsoft South Africa’s DPE team, Clifford de Wit, said Imagine Cup is a cornerstone of Microsoft’s commitment to providing opportunities for young people, by providing a platform to inspire and showcase innovation and to encourage entrepreneurship.

Team SentiMeter – Imagine Cup 2013 SA Finals winner

The event saw entries across three categories – Gaming, Innovation and World Citizenship. Microsoft also included an additional App Challenge, where students were challenged to build Apps for Windows 8, Windows Phone and Windows Azure platforms.

“These students all have one thing in common – a passion for technology and a desire to change the world for the better, starting with their innovations. Students’ work reflects immensely valuable solutions to real problems out there while giving them the opportunity to compete for generous cash prizes and the chance to build their own small business.” – De Wit

De Wit says the competition each year sees an increase in the competitive spirit and is proud to be associated with the leaders of tomorrow. He says there is a continued need for smart technology in public and business sectors. For a competition such as the Imagine Cup to have touched more than 1.65 million students of ages 16-24 from 190 countries over the past eleven years is incredibly full of impact.

Michael Ofori-Appiah, Imagine Cup judge and Senior Technologist at CSIR’s Meraka Institute believes this year’s challenge was very competitive. “The submissions and presentations were of excellent standard, which reassured us that South Africa is on the right path of developing skills in software development to compete with the rest of the world. Team building among peers of diverse skills was prominent and recipe for developing IT entrepreneurs who will soon be creating jobs for the youth.”

Another judge from BBD, Peter Scheffel, agreed. “In our industry it sometimes happens that we take significantly longer to adopt and build similar solutions. However, the students often produce entire end-to-end solutions on new technology with all the add-on features like mobile access, using technology that they have only just learnt. And it is often available on the internet for anyone to access. This is just incredible.”

The complete list of winners is as follows:

App Challenges

Best Windows Phone App
App Name: SignPro
Developer: Linda Nyoka
University: Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

Best Windows 8 App
App Name: Noted
Developer: Brian Campbell
University: University of Free State

Best Windows Azure App (Best Use of Windows Azure in Solution)
Team: SentiMeter
University: University of Johannesburg

Winners

World Citizenship
Team Superstiens
Solution: eTute Mathematics Tutoring System
University: Nelson Mandel Metropolitan University

Innovation
Team SentiMeter
Soulution: SentiMeter
University: University of Johannesburg

Games
Team Sumo Development
Game: Pillar: Revenge of the Mad Scientist
University: Nelson Mandel Metropolitan University

Overall Imagine Cup Winner to represent SA at the WW Finals in Russia July 2013

Team SentiMeter
Solution: SentiMeter
University: University of Johannesburg

Here’s wishing the best for the National Team. Go make your home country proud at the Worldwide finals in Russia!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: M.V.Priyank, #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013 – Portugal Local Finals

MSP_MVP — Sat, 11 May 2013 10:42:54 +0000

The Imagine Cup 2013 Portugal Finals were held on April 12, 2013 that saw ten finalist teams having arrived from all over Portugal to present to the judges about their projects and applications.

Anxiety was high before the results were announced since all of the finalists’ presentations were equally amazing and innovative. However, the judges had a hard time in choosing the top three teams of the day. They are as follows:

Kieran’s Journey – Games Finalist, third place at the Finals

This team from University of Beira Interior (UBI) developed a platform game about an indigenous man, Kieran, who tries to protect, no matter what, his home and his people against ‘Daragh’ and his army. The game stimulates the player to solve puzzles and enigmas to move on in the game, always in Kieran’s place and to combine strategy and combat using all the available nature resources. If you are curious about this game, watch it’s trailer here.

Taggeo – Innovation Finalist, second place at the Finals

Taggeo, developed by Porto students (FEUP), is an application that enables you to leave virtual messages anywhere, as if you were able to leave sticky notes in the world. Through a mobile app, users can leave messages anywhere using their physical location. When other users pass nearby a message, they will be notified that a message has been left in the particular place. Messages in Taggeo are not necessarily related to a specific point of interest or an object and can contain any type of data, which makes Taggeo a perfect match for companies that wish to develop innovative marketing campaigns or create custom applications.

Users or companies can also create routes, quests and challenges using this platform and reward users that complete them. For example, users can create guides to discover a city, offer promotions to users that visited specific stores, reward users that took photos or left messages on certain places or give prizes to people which successfully answered geo-quizzes. You can watch its trailer here.

For a Better World – World Citizenship Finalist and FIRST place at the Finals

This project was developed by Ana Ferraz, a student from University of Minho, and it helps in finding out a patient’s blood type in absolute five minutes. This presents a new methodology of determination of the blood type and other pre-transfusion tests using the plate test. This new test is simpler, faster and cheaper than the methods currently used. It performs tests using images from six samples and then analyses the image using image-processing techniques. This work presents a new prototype developed that automates all the processes required in the described procedure, including the mixture and centrifugation, the reading and interpretation of the results, becoming a perfect project for emergency situations. Check out this solution here.

The jury for the Imagine Cup 2013 Portugal Finals included personalities from EDP Foundation (our partner in this final), a TV station named SIC, Microsoft and professors from prestigious Universities.

Here’s congratulating all the participants and wishing the best for the Portugal National Finals winner. See you at the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals in Russia.

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: M.V.Priyank, #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013 – Bangladesh Local Finals

Ana Cristina Rocha Robleto — Thu, 09 May 2013 18:30:18 +0000

The Imagine Cup 2013 Bangladesh Local Finals were held on April 6, 2013 at the American International University, Bangladesh auditorium in front of an enthusiastic live audience for the first time.

Around 135 teams registered for the Imagine Cup 2013 Bangladesh competition and twelve teams were chosen for evaluation at the preliminary round. Among them, four teams advanced to the local finals main event.

The Jury consisted of influential individuals from the community, as follows:

Zakaria Swapon - Editor of PRIYO.com
Tapan Kanti Sarker - President of CTOForum
Radi Chowdhury - Country Manager of Nokia Bangladesh
Shah Ali Newaj Topu - CTO of Selise
Multimode Tafsir M. Awal - Managing Director, Multimode
Tareen Hossain - Executive Editor of Daily Ittefaq and
Mohammed Asif - EPG Leader of Microsoft Bangladesh

The time had arrived to announce the winners of the day, which are as follows:

BUET101 (National Team)

Their project ‘Happy Watch’ is a Windows Phone app that instantly helps monitor heart rate of dear ones and also projects the status of physical well-being far away from the user of the app.

Team Blue (First runner-up)

Team Blue developed a gesture and speech recognition based Windows Phone app that helps a regular person communicate with a deaf and mute person.

NerdCats (Second runner-up)

Team NerdCats built an amazingly fluent phonetic Bangla keyboard for the Windows Phone platform.

Many congratulations to BUET101 on being adjudged as the National Team and winner of the Imagine Cup 2013 Bangladesh Finals, thus earning a chance to represent their home country at the Worldwide Finals to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia.

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Ana Cristina Rocha, #MSPSMT

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IMAGINE CUP 2013 – POLISH LOCAL FINALS

Ariya Pakeeranumkit — Tue, 07 May 2013 07:13:05 +0000

And the winners of the Imagine Cup 2013 Polish local finals are … ‘TapBoarders’!

Here are impressions and information on Imagine Cup 2013 Local Finals in Poland.

Honour Patronage of Ministry of Economy
84 publications in the strongest Polish media
102 teams from 43 Universities participated in local Imagine Cup competition
93 polish teams in semifinals of online Challenges

“It was a great event with a huge blast of emotions, passion and innovation. I am deeply proud I was able to participate as a new DPE Lead in the ceremony and meet such so many great young people who want to change the World.” - Rafal Albin, DPE Lead Poland

The event has been organized in cooperation with Institute of Industrial Design with Honour Patronage of Ministry of Economy.

On the first day of the event 15 finalists teams competed for the final 3 places in each category. They presented their solutions in front of the Jury. This year we had 23 judges divided between three main categories. Every judging panel had to decide which 3 teams in each category would present on the final stage.

On the second day over 400 guests visited the Institute of Industrial Design to see the best 9 teams present on stage in front of a VIP Jury. Each team had 35 minutes to convince everybody that their project is the best. We had also special guest: Dariusz Bogdan – Undersecretary in Ministry of Economy and representatives of Imagine Cup sponsor’s companies: MMC Brainville, DevCore.NET and Billenium.

The VIP Jury

Sebastian Christow – Director of Electronic Economy Department in Ministry of Economy
Bożena Gargas – President of Institute of Industrial Design (co-organizer)
Bożena Lublińska-Kasprzak – President of Polish Agency of Enterprise Development
Michał Jaworski – Startegy Director at Microsoft Sp. z o.o.
Tadeusz Golonka – Microsoft Regional Director

The VIP Jury awarded 3 teams from 3 categories:

1^st place in the World Citizenship category:

We Code For Food from Białystok University of Technology for the project Smart Farm , an integrated agricultural company management system that aims at reducing food production costs. The project is based on a smartphone and a PC app which optimize farming machine routes and fuel consumption in real time.

1^st place in the Games category:

Ad Infinitum from Military Technical Academy in Warsaw for the project Idea. Much more than a game, this system combines a PC, an Xbox, a Kinect motion sensor, a web platform and Windows Azure. All this technology helps people overcome their fears and phobias that can affect their quality of life so profoundly. The game aims at reducing stress levels and cheering the gamer up while eliminating the source of their phobia.

1^st place in the Innovation category and and the title of National Team that will represent Poland in World Wide Finals in St.Petersburg, Russia went to: TapBoarders.

Their project MultiBoard is a platform to provision and commission board games in the electronic version. Running the game takes place on a number of interconnected mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. Connected mobile devices make multimedia and interactive environment for the players. Standardizing the description of the games allows you to quickly and cheaply move the popular games and create new ones.

TapBoarders from Economic University in Poznań won for their project Multiboard. Their success is really impressive because they are starting in the competition for the first time and they represent an economic and not technical university.

Special awards were given to:

Team APPengers and Yellow Noodle Dog Team – winners of Imagine Cup Venture track.
Team Future Mind – prize founded by Billenium.

This event was well attended by the local media:

20 media titles attended
84 publications in the strongest Polish media
26 interviews with DPE Lead, judges and students conducted with 6 media: PAP, TVP info, Polskie Radio, Polskie Radio Pr4, Capital24, Computerworld

During both days of Imagine Cup 2013 Polish Local Finals a group of 15 MSPs helped organizers and did a live coverage of everything that was happening in: Facebook, Flickr and Tweeter.

Social Media Results:

over 29 000 views of our Flickr site,
almost 12 000 Facebook reach on our sites,
over 1800 visits to our YouTube channel with interviews of the finalists teams.

“I would like to thank everyone who made Imagine Cup Poland 2013 a big success (in alphabetical order): Agata Dudar, Agnieszka Dziedzic, Anna Klimczuk, Joanna Justyna Rutkowska, Paulina Nesteruk, Bartłomiej Zass, Jan Kleczkowski, Karol Wituszyński, Krzysztof Folek, Marek Kosycarz, Michał Jaworski, Piotr Bubacz, Piotr Marczuk, Rafał Czupryński, Ronald Binkofski.” - Rafal Albin, DPE Lead Poland

Special thanks to Polish Microsoft Student Partners Community.

Congratulations to all teams !!!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Ariya Pakeeranumkit, #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013 – West and Central Africa Local Finals

Syed Asrarullah — Sun, 05 May 2013 04:06:06 +0000

The Imagine Cup 2013 West and Central Africa local finals were held on April 15, 2013 at the Grand Theatre National in Dakar, Senegal. Teams from three countries (Senegal, Ivory Coast and Congo) participated in the finals event as finalists.

The day saw more than 100 attendees in awe of the innovative ideas and projects presented by the teams, which are as follows:
Team 3MB – Senegal
Team KERNEL – Ivory Coast
Team HARDCORE – Democratic Republic of Congo

Imagine Cup 2013 WCA Finals – Team 3MB

Jury:

The Jury for the local finals comprised of eminent personalities as follows:

Samba Guisse – Education LEAD, Microsoft WCA
Juanito Adedze – Small Medium Business & Distribution Lead, Microsoft
Yann Lebeux – Catalyst at CTIC Dakar
Hermann Kouassi – Entrepreneurship & Innovation Program Manager, JokkoLabs
Emmanuelle Bouiti – Community Manager, Jokkolabs – Dakar.
Christelle Scharff – Professor of Computer Science at Pace University, Manhattan – Mobile Monday Senegal LEAD

Team Projects:

A brief description of the team projects is as follows:

Team KERNEL – Project NEROFORMILY
NEROFORMILY aims to empower, by a system of facial and voice recognition, patients with memory disorders. This innovative solution, which skillfully combines health and technology, also has a gaming platform which helps in patients remember their experience. Team KERNEL used Microsoft Azure and recognition software in its project.
Team HARDCORE – Project NAPRO TAXI
NAPRO TAXI is a Mobile application that aims to ‘achieve the Millennium Development Goals in a single project.’ NAPRO TAXI can help in family planning, diagnosing health problems, synchronizing the medical record of a patient, thanks to NaProTECHNOLOGY & Fertility care.
Team 3MB – Project Waxtaan
Project Waxtaan is developed for the application of computers to capture and translate sign language into words. The system allows free users to record movements and gestures that will be stored with the equivalent text in its dedicated area called Dictionary.

Imagine Cup 2013 WCA Finals – Team HARDCORE

Winners:

The jury appreciated the projects and applauded them at the end of their fantastic presentations. The time to announce the results and the winning team had come – and the results are:

Team KERNEL was declared the winner of the Imagine Cup 2013 West and Central Africa finals and will participate in the Imagine Cup 2013 Worldwide Finals in St. Petersburg, Russia for top honors. Team 3MB won the second place while Team HARDCORE was awarded the third place at the local finals event.

“We believe in the slogan of Imagine Cup 2013 – If you can Dream it, you can Build it.” – Winning Team KERNEL

Imagine Cup 2013 WECA Finals – Winning Team KERNEL

Many congratulations to the winning team. Here’s wishing them the best for the Worldwide Finals.

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by Syed Asrarullah and contributed by Ismaila Abdoulaye Ndiaye, #MSPSMT

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It has ARRIVED!!! The Microsoft Student Partner and Imagine Cup Alumni Program Launches Today!

Michelle Fleming — Wed, 01 May 2013 22:24:47 +0000

We are thrilled to announce the launch of the new Microsoft Student Partners and Imagine Cup Alumni Community!

WHY CREATE A STUDENT ALUMNI COMMUNITY?

We’ve heard from past Microsoft Student Partners and Imagine Cup Competitors that they want to “stay connected” to one another and to Microsoft. Join us in our new alumni community and relive memories, discuss new projects, nab the resources you need and most importantly continue to build your Global Network!

WHO SHOULD JOIN AND WHEN?

All previous worldwide Microsoft Student Partners (MSPs) and Imagine Cup competitors are invited to join now.

ONE NEW ALUMNI WINS A TRIP TO THE IMAGINE CUP WORLDWIDE FINALS IN ST. PETERSBURG!

Register in our new Alumni Community and apply to represent all alumni as the Alumni Judge at the Worldwide Finals in Russia this July. Click here to learn more!

The post It has ARRIVED!!! The Microsoft Student Partner and Imagine Cup Alumni Program Launches Today! appeared first on Imagine Cup 2013.

Imagine Cup 2013 – Palestine Local Finals

Laila Abu-Dahi — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 22:47:57 +0000

The Imagine Cup 2013 Palestine Local Finals held on April 15, 2013 was a remarkable day that saw many great presentations and innovative ideas.

The main Imagine Cup Palestine Finals event was held in Ramallah city while the Gaza teams joined in through a video conference.

The day commenced with high level of excitement that saw many teams and judges participate from all around the country. Eventually, only five teams as below made it to Round Two:

World Citizenship:

1- Famz – Palestine Polytechnic University; introduced a hardware that teaches Braille for children.

2- MCtionary – Al Najah University; introduced an interactive multimedia player with an embedded dictionary that allows the interaction of the user in a creative way.

Innovation:

1- Magic Pyramid – Al Najah University; magicPyramid is a project that features a new and innovative way to display 3D object models in space. The viewed model looks as if it is projected in mid-air as a hologram. The developed platform can be used as a powerful advertising medium that can be used in stores, shops, exhibits and companies.

2- Fresco – Al Najah University; This team introduces a very creative way of controlling and playing Windows 8 and Windows Phone games using any object on any surface including air.

3- Yorwa – Birzeit University; Yorwa is a search engine for Arabic quotes on social media websites.

Games:

1- Echo Team– Al Najah University; developed Sight the Light game.

2- Beavers – Arab American University of Jenin; developed Cykee game.

As the results were announced, one winner was announced in each category was declared as follows -

1- World Citizenship category: Famz – Palestine Polytechnic University

2- Innovation category: Fresco – Al Najah University

3- Games category: Beavers – Arab American University of Jenin

By the end of the day, Team Fresco was chosen to represent Palestine at the Imagine Cup 2013 World Wide Finals in Russia. Here’s wishing them the best of luck!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Follow the official Microsoft Imagine Cup Channels:

Website: http://www.imaginecup.com/
Blog: http://www.imaginecup.com/Main/News
Twitter: https://twitter.com/imaginecup
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/microsoftimaginecup
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/imaginecup/

See more content from the MSPSMT online!

Blog: http://www.icsocialmediateam.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MSPSMT2013
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mspsmt
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/wwmsp
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mspsmt

Created by: Laila Abudahi, #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013 – Ukraine Local Finals

Syed Asrarullah — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:39:04 +0000

Microsoft Imagine Cup, the world’s premier student technological competition, saw its Ukraine National Finals being held on April 9, 2013 at the Microsoft Ukraine Office. Of late, Imagine Cup in Ukraine has seen huge growth in its popularity with more than 1100 registrations and 738 active competitors in all categories. More than 40 teams submitted their projects in the three main categories – Games, Innovation and World Citizenship.

Imagine Cup Ukraine – Team presentation

With the change in competition format and increase in participation (number of projects increased almost 35 % compared to last year), an additional round of online presentations was announced which saw nine best projects (three for each category) nominated for the National Finals.

On the Imagine Cup Ukraine Finals day, the proceedings were divided into two parts; the first half saw presentations from all the participating teams where team members demonstrated their product, technical features, technologies used and how their application helps solve a global problem. Later on during the second part of the day, three super finalists (best one from each category) were announced where they then presented their project as a potential start-up to an expanded jury panel consisting of IT specialists and famous Ukrainian celebrities.

Imagine Cup Ukraine Finals – Judges

The jury panel for Microsoft Imagine Cup 2013 Ukraine Finals was very special and diverse, consisting of IT-professionals, top-managers of leading IT companies, start-up owners and consultants, journalists and Ukrainian superstars:

Andrey Terekhov – DPE Lead at Microsoft Ukraine
Anna Degtiarjova – Managing Partner at “Happy farm”, a startup accelerator
Maxim Osika and Valeriy Yasakov – lmagine Cup 2012 Software Design winners
Taras Mischenko – Editor-in-Chief at “ITC.UA”
Sergey Baydachnyy – Technical evangelist at Microsoft
Oleksiy Kononskiy – Partner Cooperation Manager at Dell
Anatolii Anatolich – presenter on morning show “Ranok z 1+1”, TV channel 1+1
Svitlana Paniushkina – Editor-in-Chief at “Segodnya” newspaper
Ihor Kondratyuk – Ukrainian celebrity, a judge of “X-factor”, “Ukraine Got Talent” and other TV-shows

Winners

Imagine Cup Ukraine – 1st place winner

As everyone waited with anticipation for the results, the first place (Innovation Category) and the title of the National Team was won by Andrii Konovalenko, a high school student from the city of Stakhanov. His project, Camtouch, helps change the way of human-computer interaction by allowing a user to change any flat surface in to a smart-board with a help of a computer and a web camera.

The second place was awarded to Team Hammerbird from Odessa (Games category) who designed a game focused on adventures of a water drop in a polluted world.

Team Prismatique (World Citizenship) from Lugansk, won the third place at the National finals. Their project was devoted to help children in the age group of 4-6 years to learn to read and count.

Imagine Cup 2013 Ukraine Finals was supported by DELL, which presented a powerful notebook to the overall winner and Nokia, which awarded Nokia Lumia phones to the runner-up and second runner-up teams in the finals. Descriptions of all projects in Ukrainian was published in a special brochure which was distributed to all attendees of the National Finals.

Many thanks to the organizing team at Microsoft Ukraine for putting up such a spectacular show. Here’s wishing the best for the National Team in representing Ukraine at the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia.

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Syed Asrarullah, #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013 – Ecuador Local Finals

Carlos Jose Rojas Reyes — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:37:10 +0000

The Imagine Cup 2013 Ecuadorian Local Finals were held on April 15, 2013 at Quito. Five teams made it to the final round with innovative projects.

The atmosphere prior to the announcement of the winning team was tense. All the teams showed great initiative, effort and innovation in their presentations but only one among them could win the title of the National Team and go on to represent Equador at the Worldwide Finals in Russia.

The winner of the National Team title is AYNI (means ‘help’ in Quechua) from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (World Citizenship category). Ayni is an app that helps provide social assistance to those who need it the most. It is an initiative based on the lack of visibility of the organizations that perform social assistance.

The Imagine Cup 2013 Ecuador Finals were graced by the attendance of the Vice-minister of Telecommunications and the Innovation National Secretary. They contributed with tips to each of the participating teams and also recognized the valuable work of Microsoft on working with helpful initiatives like Imagine Cup. At the same time they also pledged to continue giving ideas to improve the participation of Ecuador in the international competition.

The excitement around Imagine Cup Ecuador is growing every year with increased number of participations being recorded each time. Many congratulations to AYNI on winning the chance to represent Equador at the Worldwide Finals in Russia.

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Follow the official Microsoft Imagine Cup Channels:
Website: http://www.imaginecup.com/
Blog: http://www.imaginecup.com/Main/News
Twitter: http://twitter.com/imaginecup
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/microsoftimaginecup
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/imaginecup/

See more content from the MSPSMT online:
Blog: http://icsocialmediateam.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MSPSMT2013
Twitter: http://twitter.com/mspsmt
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/wwmsp
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mspsmt

Created by: Carlos Jose Rojas Reyes, #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013 – Greece Local Finals

Ismaila Abdoulaye Ndiaye — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:10:49 +0000

The Imagine Cup 2013 Greece Local Finals event took place on
Monday, April 15^th.

The event started with a warm welcome and a brief review of the Imagine Cup initiative and Greek project submissions by our DPE Lead Eleni Rachaniotou. The event continued with the presentations of 10 finalists student teams who shared their inspiring innovative project ideas. More than 60 attendees gathered to see the announcement of the winning team who will represent Greece during the Worldwide finals in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The Judges

Eleni Rachaniotou - DPE Lead,

Fotis Draganidis - General Manager of Microsoft Innovation Center,

Leontios Hatzileontiadis - Professor at the Aristotle University,

Yiannis Vlahoyiannis - Bugsense founder,

George Kasselakis - Openfund partner,

Loukas Pilitsis - Fund Manager PJ Tech Catalyst Fund

Panagiotis Markidis - Journalist at Proto Thema.

Winning Teams:

World Citizenship category

Team-Kinemat from the University of Peiraieus won the 1st place with the project Kinemat . Kinemat combines the added value of illustrated educational books that aim to help young children (4-6 years old) to acquire basic knowledge and skills, electronic toys and playful activities for children such as blocks, bricks lego, etc.

Kinemat creates interactive narrative instructional book-games which are played by young children (4-6 years old) with physical interaction (i.e. with body movements and without the need of a mouse and keyboard) thanks to the Kinect for Windows camera. Children reading an interactive book and are invited to reveal the story by playing alone or in collaborative activities either with hand and body movements or by the use of objects.

Kinemat aims at helping children love books and enrich their educational process with fun, experiential learning and effective activities via physical interaction technologies and augmented reality.

The winning team – Kinemat

Team 4sense won the 2^nd place with the project easylexia. It refers to an information system which aims at improving literacy and learning of children aged 7 to 12 who are facing dyslexia problems. The goal of the project is to combine the positive effect of the use of new technological tools with the specialized tests suggested by therapists and scientists which deal with learning difficulties and more specifically with dyslexia. This application can help solve mathematical problems, on the organization of thoughts and strengthen the self-confidence of children with dyslexia.

The 3^rd place was secured by Team Quarinos with the project Social Actions Volunteering Ecosystem (S.A.V.E.): an ecosystem which aims at helping organizations, NGOs and ordinary users grow their volunteer base. All system users will be able to find the volunteers they need for their activities. The system also offers an evaluation system through which the public has the opportunity to evaluate and reward the best volunteers.

Innovation Category

Team Majestic won the 1^st place with their project Museo: An application aiming to offer a complete and easy experience tour to all museums around the world by the use of the powerful hardware technology of Windows Phones. The user will have access not only to a voice-guide but also in a 3-D experience via phone’s camera. The image captured via the camera will be enriched with information. The application also offers a 2-D map of the museum for the user to best navigate himself around the exhibits.

Team Vageli won the 2^nd place the with project Scainet (Smart Collaborative Agent Intelligence NETwork): serving the interactions of human-computer and computer-computer,through an innovative way. In Scainet, people, devices and software communicate via social networks. Devices have the potential to discover other devices in the house, connect with them based on the needs of each device and work together to bring a specific command in to life based on the owner’s needs.

Last but not least, the 3^rd place was given to team Pythais with the project TubeR: an intelligent system for the identification and classification of different kinds of truffles at low cost which may be used by a wide range of users such as traders, wild truffle hunters, professionals in the cooking industry etc.

We look forward to more brilliant ideas from our innovative youth in the future and wish to continue the fantastic top ranking tradition of Hellenic Teams at the Imagine Cup 2013 WW finals. All the best to our winning team in Russia!

Good luck to all!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Ismaila Abdoulaye Ndiaye, #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013: Pakistan Local Finals (Part 1)

Fatima Rashid — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 21:42:09 +0000

Out of 150 projects received during the final round of Imagine Cup 2013 in Pakistan, more than 25 judges evaluated the short-listed submissions.

Imagine Cup 2013 Pakistan National Winner:

The winner of Imagine Cup 2013 Pakistan is Team Epi-C from Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute (GIKI), Topi KPK with their project Epi-C. The team consists of four members: Ihtisham-Ul-Haq, Sadia Yousafzai, Sherjeel Sikander and Suleman Belal Kazi.

Category-wise Winners of Imagine Cup 2013 Pakistan Finals:

World Citizenship: Team Epi-C | Project Epi-C from GIKI Institute, Topi KPK.
Innovation: Team Smass | Project Demyst from NUST SEECS, Islamabad.
Games: Team technoCrafts | Project Game O Chat from University of Karachi, Karachi

Want to know more? More details will be coming soon about these winning teams so stay tuned for Part 2 of the story.

Many congratulations to Team Epi-C for winning the chance to represent Pakistan at the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals to be held in July, 2013 in Saint Petersburg, Russia!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Follow the official Microsoft Imagine Cup Channels:

Website: http://www.imaginecup.com/
Blog: http://www.imaginecup.com/Main/News
Twitter: https://twitter.com/imaginecup
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/microsoftimaginecup
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/imaginecup/

See more content from the MSPSMT online!

Blog: http://www.icsocialmediateam.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MSPSMT2013
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mspsmt
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/wwmsp
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mspsmt

Created by: Fatima Rashid, #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013 – Belgium Local Finals

Aohan Lin — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:33:44 +0000

The Imagine Cup Belgium Local Finals were held on 15th April, 2013. This beautiful country with a rich history and great culture achievements witnessed students’ fantastic imaginations and cutting-edge technology advances at a national scale. The competition was held on a very special location: Idealabs Antwerp, a startup accelerator, which makes for excellent student networking!

Our Best Edition Ever
It is hard to deny that Imagine Cup 2013 achieves best projects from students all over the country than ever in Belgium. Fifteen teams competed in the 3 categories and were evaluated by a multidisciplinary jury from startup incubators, game specialists and technical people. The competition among these teams was fierce but fruitful— as we saw many innovative ideas come out with students’ mutual colliding inspirations.

Winner – Innovation category

Vote2 DJ is a Windows 8 and Windows Phone app powered by Azure to vote your favorite song to the top. Interactive and fun, the app can be used at parties or cafés – with built-in challenges. Boost your top song or make other songs you dislike crash in the hit lists.
Winner – Games category

Huxley by Area 12 is a fast paced 2.5D platformer in a magic, adventurous world. The game has a special new twist: the gamer needs to manipulate his own gravity in order to solve the mystery that is affecting the home forest.

National Team

The Belgium National Team and local finals winner are life savers Hateya in the category World Citizenship.

Hateya is a project that was born from a horrible fact: people who save many lives, often die themselves doing so. Every year, firemen pass away because of loss of orientation: they don’t find the exit in a burning house. Hateya’s solution helps firemen find the exit safely.

The tool is a kind of thread to find your way. The firemans’ device records the path trace and analyzes the environment to transmit to a monitor, located outside the building, allowing real-time visualization of data for each person in the building. The fireman can exit the building using the special glasses guiding him.

Innovate for Good
During the finals, special sessions were also held a side-track called “Innovate for Good”.
These sessions are focused on helping young people who are interested in the field of social innovation, social entrepreneurship or social good, to evolve their change making ideas. Together with the students, they brainstormed on how to solve few social issues with technology projects. The ideas will be further developed on the Microsoft I4G portal, an online community, and could be even used for Imagine Cup next year. More info here.

Press

Imagine Cup in Belgium also got great press from all corners of the country

Special Thanks
Special thanks to the jury members, IdeaLabs, IMC staff, Anthony De Bruyn from DPE and especially Stephanie Moorkens for her dedicated support and Laurence Verriest from Citizenship and of course all participants to make this a great edition!

At Imagine Cup 2013 Belgium, we saw great students with great passion which made the competition a splendid feast of technology. We hope that the seeds of imagination can germinate in this land and blossom beautifully forever!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Aohan Lin, #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013 – Australian Local Finals

Ashley Perkins — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 02:18:59 +0000

Last year in 2012, Australia not only participated in the Microsoft Imagine Cup competition but also held the World Finals seeing amazing entries and fierce competition from all students participating. Fast forward to 2013 and building upon the momentum created in Australia around the Imagine Cup and the Australian Local Finals saw incredible entries for the World Citizenship competition.

The local finals were held at the Microsoft Australia’s headquarters and brought the four finalists together to present their ideas to the panel of judges. Each of the four teams not only presented their ideas but were also able to demonstrate their solutions in real-time.

Team UCWorldCitizenship, Team Confufufish Royale, Team Trinary Logic from the University of Sydney, and UCESTeam all took the stage and wowed judges with their innovation and level of execution.

Confufufish Royale from the University of New South Wales took first place however and will be representing Australia at the World Finals in Russia. The judges explained that their win was a narrow one with Trinary Logic from the University of Sydney close behind.

Confufufish Royale had competed in the 2012 Australian Local Finals and finished third but chose to continue working on their solution ‘Project Foodbank Local’ for 2013. The project connects donor agencies with food distribution centres and soup kitchens through a distribution and logistics system. As they explained in their presentation, charities and organisations currently spend a majority of their funds on distribution of donations. ‘Project Foodbank Local’ assists with identifying demand and availability of food and how to best distribute that within the local community to keep distribution costs to a minimum.

The second place winners Trinary Logic built a diabetes management app which incorporated incredible optical recognition of food and drink products as well as alerts to assist with tracking of insulin and sugar levels for diabetics.

We at the MSP Social Media Team are looking forward to bringing more on the Confufufish Royale team and their journey to 2013 Imagine Cup World Finals in Russia as well all teams competing in the competition around the world.

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Ashley Perkins, #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013 – Tunisia Local Finals

Abir Yahyaoui — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:30:58 +0000

The Imagine Cup Tunisia Finals is an event to always strive for and pay attention to. The community was eagerly waiting for the big event to happen as many students have been working diligently on innovative solutions and were excited to showcase their “cool stuff” that will ultimately help make a difference in the world through technology. Imagine Cup 2013 Tunisia Local Finals were celebrated on April 10, 2013 – a date that will be in the annals of history for a long time.

For the first time in 7 years the Tunisian local finals took place in a different city than the capital Tunis, South Capital Sfax – 275 kilometers away from Tunis. More than 700 students attended in support of the finalist teams. Of 33 competing teams, only 6 teams made it to the finals.

This year’s slogan was “Dream Big”! It was clear to anyone sitting in the auditorium that each member of the finalist teams carried their dreams in their eyes. Their passion was heard by every audience member!

Such a big event should be started by a big man considered as an industry icon by many students in Tunisia. Mr. Mohamed Bridaa Microsoft Tunisia Country Manager highlighted the opportunities behind the Imagine Cup and how they can take students into entrepreneurship by way of a dream to a real startup project! He discussed as well that the journey continues post competition as Microsoft will keep supporting them via the BizSpark program.

Mr. Moncef Ben Salem Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research honored us as well by his presence and support to the students confirming that the government will always support them and help them find resources necessary for them to succeed and realize their dreams.

The 6 teams were face the jury members composed by Mr. Keita Mamadi Architect of the Souk tanmia, Mr. Riadh Robbana Professor at INSAT University and twice jury member at the worldwide finals (New York 2011 and Sydney 2012), Mr. Wassel Berrayana CEO Proxym IT, Mr. Fares Ben souilah animator at Shems FM radio, Mr. Walid Sultan Midani and Mr. Riadh Bakir from Digital Mania specialized in video games.

The first team on stage was “EspritMO” composed by Zayen Chagra and Omar Zakarya Ben Mostpha from ESPRIT University, their project entitled Klem a solution that aims to protect human cultural wealth using the local dialect.

The 2^nd team presented for the second year as one of the finalist team is “Wise team” who took the 3^rd place last year composed by Mohamed Ouederni from ENIT, Yassine Jaaouane and Slimen Belhadj Ali from INSAT and Slim Arfaoui from TIME University.

Their project called Drive Alive is preventive solutions that can help truck drivers to avoid sleep driving problems. This solution is a cloud Service consumed by a Windows Store application.

The 3^rd team on stage was Innovatech composed by Achraf Bakir, Selmi Chouheib and Sabrine Fattoum from ESTI and Ghazi Jedidi from ESAC university who presented their project Familya , a Windows Phone 8 App where you can have your own family space and manage their different chores.

A surprise was waiting for the audience, a Russian Ballet to calm the atmosphere, and showcase some of the culture that will await the team that heads to Russia in July!

After dancing and cheering with the Russian band it was time to continue the presentations of the 3 others teams.

The 4^th team called on stage was MobtakerON, the team members were Hejer Krichene, Jamel Eddin mejri, Aymen Souilmi and Ahmed Mouafa from ISI.

MobtakerON Project’s was called SmartLife wish is 6 projects in 1: Smart Guide, Smart Rating, Smart Buy, Smart Menu, Smart Kitchen and Smart Reminder simply an integral system composed of a web platform, a mobile app and cloud-stored database to make your life easier.

And when it was time for the 5th team to get on stage everyone was cheering for them and calling their name “Tunisian Brains”: the Local team here who includes the following members Frikha Fares, Ahmed Amine Ghozzi, Hejer Hadrich and Cherif Ghozzi from ISET Sfax.

Their project Future Vision is a device capable of transmitting information (image, video…) from a Pico projector directly to the eye of the user.

For the live demo Tunisian Brains invited the jury members to try their application one by one.

Before inviting the 6^th team on stage, Mahdi Njim last year’s winner recorded a video to this year’s participants where he was talking about his 3 years’ experience with the Imagine Cup.

The final team was “Kiddy Kiddy” from ENISO, Sousse composed by Nasreddine Loued, Sofiane Chaieb and Amir Knani who presented their game “Numbers Game” wish aims to help babies discover numbers.

While the jury members were discussing who will be the winner, Khaled Jemni one of the most active Microsoft Student Partners in Tunisia and one of the participant in the Imagine Cup online presented his game dedicated to help kids learn alphabet.

That day we saw six innovative and ingenius teams present solutions that varied and creative. Unfortunately there was one and only one team who will have the honor to represent Tunisia in the World Wide Finals.

Mr. Faouzi Soussi and Miss Alia Mahmoud presented certificates to the participating teams before the Jury president announced this years winner.

First of all Mr. Riadh Robbana announced every category’s winner: Kiddy Kiddy for the Game Category, ESPRITMO of the citizenship category and Innovatech as the most innovative project.

Innovatech was lucky enough to get 2 prizes: the prize of the category innovation and the 2^nd place this year, each team member will receive a Nokia Lumia 920 as a prize.

Travelling to St. Petersburg?…

And the 1^st place goes to Wise Team with their Project Drive alive wish help track drivers to schedule their trip, alert drivers if they are sleeping and based on their health condition, schedule stops based on rest area locations. If those areas are not available, the application will send a feedback to the NGOs and governments indicating the need to install a rest area.

All of that wouldn’t be done without the big effort of Microsoft Tunisia Team especially Mr. Ahmed Kaddour (Technical Evangelist) who was always there to support the Microsoft Student Partners and the Microsoft Clubs in Tunisia.

The Imagine Cup Social Media Team wishes good luck for all the participants and we are waiting for the Tunisian team to join us in St. Petersburg in July! See you there guys.

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Follow the Official Microsoft Imagine Cup Channels:
Website: http://www.imaginecup.com/
Blog: http://www.imaginecup.com/blogs/defau …
Twitter: https://twitter.com/imaginecup
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/microsoftimaginecup
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/imaginecup/

Created by: Abir Yahyaoui, #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013 – Japan Local Finals

Michael Quandt — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:30:46 +0000

On the 7th of April, Microsoft Japan held their Imagine Cup local finals in Tokyo after a competitive preliminary round that saw ten teams chosen to move through. Most of the finalists adopted new technologies such as Windows 8 and the Kinect to enhance their solutions and show how technology evolves to enable new ideas.

Team Breakdown

4 Games
2 Innovation
4 Windows Challenge

The Judges

The students presented their solutions to a panel of top ranking judges:
Daisaku Ikejiri – Game Producer, CEO of filament Inc.
Akihiko Inami – Professor, Graduate School of Media Design, Keio University.
Shunichi Kajisa – CEO of Microsoft Development Japan, CTO of Microsoft Japan
Kiyoshi Shin – Game/IT Journalist
Rin Yano – Web Designer, Baidu Japan

All of the teams demonstrated their solutions during a showcase session, which let the public and media try out the games and applications available. The students then impressed those watching with their focus on developing a global start-up, ready to expand into the international market.

In the end, only one team could go to Russia, but Japan also added an extra winner for the Windows 8 challenge, celebrating development on the new platform.

The Winners

The winner of the Windows 8 challenge was Aoringo with their game New War’s for Windows 8 tablets.
The team that will be going to Russia in July, with their Universal Game Framework Library – Knowall Library5.0, is team Project N, from Kyoto Computer Gakuin.

Congratulations to Teppei Yoneyama, Chester Lee Chin Zhen and all of Project N, who will represent Japan in Russia at the worldwide finals with Knowall Library5.0.

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Follow the Official Microsoft Imagine Cup Channels:
Website: http://www.imaginecup.com/
Blog: http://www.imaginecup.com/blogs/default.aspx
Twitter: https://twitter.com/imaginecup
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/microsoftimaginecup
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/imaginecup/

See more content from the MSPSMT online!
Blog: http://www.icsocialmediateam.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MSPSMT2013
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mspsmt
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/wwmsp
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mspsmt

Created by: Michael Quandt, #MSPSMT

Special thanks to the Imagine Cup Japan core team:

Hiroyuki Watanabe
Madoka Nakamura
Miho Funakoshi
Mieko Uozu
Yoshitaka Kasugai

The post Imagine Cup 2013 – Japan Local Finals appeared first on Imagine Cup 2013.

Imagine Cup 2013 – Armenia Local Finals

Ahmed Abd El Mageed ( Megii ) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 23:18:41 +0000

The Imagine Cup 2013 Armenia Finals were held on 12 April, 2013 at the Microsoft Innovation Center, Armenia. This year, the National Finals were organized by Microsoft, Microsoft Innovation Center Armenia and sponsored by USAID EDMC project.

The day saw seven teams competing in the final round for a chance to represent Armenia at the Worldwide Finals in Russia.

The Winners

National Champion – Innovation Category

Lionsharp Solutions: “Voiceboard”

The project uses Kinect to “give eyes and ears” to the whiteboard. “We believe in building a new way to interface with what was traditionally a whiteboard. We want to allow you to move freely and speak naturally with the Voiceboard, letting it do the work of digitizing your ideas and creativity.”

Games Category

MiXoft: “Paint the Music”
This Windows 8 App lets you draw and create music using various musical instruments by simply touching the screen. “We want to enable people to unleash their creativity and become music drawing artists!”

Special Guests

The US Ambassador to the Republic of Armenia and CEOs of key Armenian IT companies attended the event. The Ambassador approached all seven finalists and interacted with them about their projects. In his speech he thanked Microsoft for organizing such an event and mentioned the importance of raising entrepreneurial spirit and skills for the Armenian youth.

Special thanks to everyone who was involved in making the Imagine Cup Armenia 2013 Local finals a great success!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

See more content from the MSPSMT online!
Blog: http://www.icsocialmediateam.com
Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/MSPSMT2013
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mspsmt
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/wwmsp
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mspsmt

Created by: Ahmed Abd El Mageed , #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013 – Uganda Local Finals

Keven Hernandez — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 04:02:58 +0000

For the first time in the history of Imagine Cup, East Africa will be represented by two teams at the Imagine Cup 2013 Worldwide finals; one from Uganda and another from Kenya. In total, 150 Ugandan students competed in the local finals of Uganda held on April 15, 2013; a challenging yet exciting day of presentations which brought together students from multiple universities across the country.

The local finals of Uganda was held at Makerere University. It was also the first time that the finals were jointly hosted in Uganda by Microsoft, Makerere University, and Microsoft Innovation Centre at Makerere.

Speaking at the launch of the competition, Mr. Simon Onyango, Microsoft Business Development Manager in Uganda, challenged the youth to take time to focus on developing technology applications that are wealth creating and not just ‘cool’.

“While many local developers have focused their work on developing consumer applications, it is important that they also look into the opportunities that exist in B2C (Business 2 Consumer) Apps, Independent Software Vendors (ISV) Line of Business Apps and In House Line of Business Apps as these remain largely unexplored and present real business opportunities,” he said.

Drake Mirembe Manager Microsoft Innovation Center Uganda, Makerere University said – “We are proud to be associated with Microsoft and Imagine Cup competition. This is the 6th year Makerere University will be sending students to the worldwide finals and we congratulate this year’s winners for a job well done. Although only one team will proceed to Russia, all competitors today did a commendable job.”

Innovative projects were presented by teams from different universities throughout the day. Some of the highlights include a smartphone charger powered by radio waves (Team Afripak), an innovative online trade idea (Team BvITech), an app that fights climate change (Team Tush), a revision guide and assistant application (Team Patchit247), and a social network to make you rich and famous (Team AlNetwork).

WINNERS

After a long day of presentations, Mr. Simon Onyango announced the winners for this year’s local finals in Uganda. Two projects stood out among the other innovative projects presented earlier by Ugandan students:

Runner-Up: Team KodeDream

Team KodeDream was named as a runner-up and will be receiving laptops powered by Windows 8 as a special prize. Their project aims to increase life expectancy by having a virtual doctor with you wherever you go through a health wrist band that talks to your phone.

Winner: Team Code 8

This year, Uganda will be represented by Team Code 8, a team of students from Makerere University who developed an application that can diagnose malaria without pricking any body part. They will be the official representatives of Uganda and will be sent to St. Petersburg, Russia this July to compete at the Imagine Cup Worldwide finals.

Team Code 8 is made up of Businge Joshua, Gitta Brian both who are first year Computer Science students, Simon Lubambo, a fourth year Electrical Engineering student and their mentor Josiah Kavuma, a third year Information Technology student. Their project called Matibabu uses a light sensor connected to a tablet that is passed over a finger to diagnose malaria through matiscope technology. Through Matibabu, the team envisions a future where there is no need for a real doctor to test malaria.

Each team that competed in Uganda’s country finals deserves the highest recognition for the creativity and imagination applied to some of the world’s biggest challenges.

“We’re proud to honour these young students who we believe truly exemplify the spirit of the Imagine Cup competition, and we’ll be cheering team Code 8 on as they  compete on the world stage in St Petersburg!” said Mr. Onyango.

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Kev Hernandez, #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013 – Germany Local Finals

Carlos Jose Rojas Reyes — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 23:56:21 +0000

Microsoft Imagine Cup celebrated the best in technology during the Local Finals event held from April 4-6, 2013 in Germany. Along with the annual Student Technology Conference and the SuperSummit, which closes the gap between MSPs and CampusExperten (Germany’s implementation of WinU Crew), Germany played host to a fantastic experience revolving around technology!

Fifteen Imagine Cup teams with five in each competition (Innovation, World Citizenship, Games), eight jury members, ten sponsors and exhibitors and around 350 attendees were anxiously awaiting the start of the day which was to include 3 keynotes, 30 sessions, 2 lunch talks, 2 hackathons and Imagine Cup prices worth 20K+ apart from the three complementary AppCampus Grants.

And the winners are…

Innovation Competition Winner: MySchool

MySchool helps make the modern school paperless through an end-to-end solution for schools and scholars.

World Citizenship Competition Winner: Metappolic

Metappolic helps you fight the metabolic syndrome (Diabetes, high blood pressure, Adipositas).

Games Competition Winner: Clown School

Clown School is a Kinect-based math game for II to III grade elementary scholars.

World Citizenship metappolic was adjudged as the National winner and will represent Germany at the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia in July 2013.

Many congratulations to the winning team!!!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Carlos Jose Rojas Reyes, #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013 – India Local Finals

Syed Asrarullah — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 23:34:06 +0000

The Imagine Cup India finals were held on 10^th April 2013 to celebrate the best innovative applications among participating teams. This year, Imagine Cup saw 14,000 registrations, 5,000 competing teams and 65 media stories about them. Coming from a single country, these figures are sure to have broken many records!

There were five finalist teams competing in two categories: Innovation and World Citizenship.

The day was off to a great start with the Demo Xtravaganza run by folks from the Technical Evangelism Team – Microsoft, showing off the best of Windows Phone 8 apps and their amazing features. The finalist teams were then invited to the stage to let the audience know more about their journey to the Imagine Cup India Finals. The finalist teams category-wise are as follows:

Innovation Category:

Codlash
Path Finders
Opus
Innovative Thinkers
Exception Underflow

World Citizenship category

The Rudder Mechanics
Codlash
DA-Developers
Path Finders
Kartavya

Before the winning team was announced, Joseph Landes – General Manager, DPE – Microsoft India took to the stage and enlightened attendees about the significance of Imagine Cup and how it continues to churn out innovative and life-saving applications from members of the student community. Som Mittal, President – NASSCOM and Bhaskar Pramnaik, Chairman – Microsoft India also shared their insights about young students helping make this world a better place to live.

The award ceremony finally arrived where Team Path Finders was crowned as the National Winners, winning in both the categories (Innovation and World Citizenship). They proudly showcased their winning trophies on stage, the cash prize of INR 80,000, their Lumia 920 devices and of course the ticket for their flight straight to St. Petersburg, Russia for the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals.

Many congratulations to the teams in India who organized this incredibly successful event. Here’s wishing the best for Team Path Finders in representing India at the Imagine Cup 2013 Worldwide Finals to be held in July in St. Petersburg, Russia.

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Follow the Official Microsoft Imagine Cup Channels:
Website: http://www.imaginecup.com/
Blog: http://www.imaginecup.com/Main/News/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/imaginecup
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/microsoftimaginecup
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/imaginecup/

Created by: Syed Asrarullah, #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013 – Cyprus Local Finals

Carlos Jose Rojas Reyes — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 23:21:48 +0000

In September 2012, Microsoft Cyprus announced the local competition of Imagine Cup for the third consecutive time. Following the structure of this year’s Imagine Cup, three categories were available – Games, Innovation and World Citizenship – in which the students could compete.

Imagine Cup keeps growing in Cyprus and this year marked the competition’s most successful year with some great talent, interesting ideas/projects and lots of innovation! On March 29, 2013 the Imagine Cup National Finals took place in Limassol on the premises of Cyprus University of Technology.

Imagine Cup Cyprus is gaining great exposure and gradually turning out to be a competition that the students look forward to. The competition is supported by all the major universities in the country, with some of them incorporating it into their courses. This year Cyprus had 38 teams registering in the local competition, with 15 teams submitting their projects and competing in the local finals. This was a record high for Cyprus, with almost 3 times as much team registrations as last year and an increase of 50% in the number of teams that submitted their projects and competed in the local finals.

First place in Innovation and title of the National team goes to team Nudge From Cyprus and their project NearFieldCare. The team, consisting of four second year students from the University of Cyprus, tries to give an alternate, better and cheap solution to the conventional MediAlert tags with the use of NFC. NearFieldCare utilizes NFC and NFC enabled smartphones and devices in order to solve the problem of identifying the medical conditions of a person that goes through an emergency situation that prevents him/her from speaking.

Here’s wishing many congratulations to the winning team Nudge from Cyprus and all the best for the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia in July 2013.

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Carlos Jose Rojas Reyes, #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013 – China Local Finals

Qichao Chen — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 22:58:58 +0000

The Imagine Cup 2013 China Local Finals were held on April 11, 2013. Throughout the day, attendees saw some great innovative ideas and presentations from the Finalist teams. Team Imagine The World took top honours.

The winning team

Their game – Mental Care Plus comprises of a novel 3D display and gesture recognition system called as ‘Smart 3D’ based on Kinect technology which offers more realistic adaptive 3D display and accurate close gesture interaction. With the incorporation of Smart 3D and Kinect, two lively games are designed to help intellectual disabled children with their rehabilitation and helping them grasp vocational skills easily.

Team Imagine The World, coming from Fuzhou University Zhicheng College City,China and Xidian University, won the special award and also the coveted opportunity to represent China at the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals.

The other competing teams were:

Team Curo – Xidian University
Team Cafa Design – China Central Academy of Fine Arts
The Team Combine – Huazhong University of Science and Technolog
The Team Sogoal – Agricultural University Of South China

They all have won a cash prize of 10,000 RMB. Many congratulations to them!

Imagine Cup 2013 – China Local Finals

Huge thanks to all the organizing members for putting up a spectacular show to showcase the best in technology among student community members, including members of the MSP Social Media Team.

Team Imagine The World, here’s wishing you all the best for the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia in July 2013.

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Follow the official Microsoft Imagine Cup Channels:

Website: http://www.imaginecup.com/

Blog: http://www.imaginecup.com/Main/News

Twitter: http://twitter.com/imaginecup

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/microsoftimaginecup

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/imaginecup/

See more content from the MSPSMT online:

Blog: http://icsocialmediateam.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MSPSMT2013

Twitter: http://twitter.com/mspsmt

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/wwmsp

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mspsmt

Created by: Qichao Chen and Aohan Lin, #MSPSMT

The post Imagine Cup 2013 – China Local Finals appeared first on Imagine Cup 2013.

Imagine Cup 2013 – Hungary Local Finals

Ismaila Abdoulaye Ndiaye — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 21:19:11 +0000

The Imagine Cup Hungary National Finals was a part of the largest mobile conference, smartmobil (April 6, 2013). Ten ‘student-startup’ teams presented their inspirational and innovative solutions before a jury.

“This high quality event has proved that Microsoft has a place in the startup ecosystem. Everybody felt that this is a serious competition despite the natural and relaxed atmosphere.” - Péter Kádas, Imagine Cup Finals Judge

Representatives of Microsoft and key influencers of the Hungarian startup ecosystem consented to be a part of the jury as follows:

Péter Kádas – Startup blogger at startupdate.hu and CEO, Brandvocat,
Péter B. Záboji - Founder and President, European Entrepreneurship Foundation,
Elise Sass - Startup Lead at Microsoft CEE
István Papp - General Manager of Microsoft Hungary
György Simó - Managing Partner at Day One Capital.

The National team, who gets to represent Hungary in the Imagine Cup worldwide finals, is PlanB, with their project LearnInvisible . This application helps novice language learners in an innovative way as it uses a unique graphic solution and ‘personal experience‘ to teach words.

The Statzup project finished in second place. This application brings football fans closer to their favorite clubs and players.

The team finishing in third place, Division by Zero, developed a service that eases the everyday lives of people living with autism.

Congratulations to all the teams.

We offer our best wishes to the Imagine Cup Hungary Finals winner, PlanB for the WorldWide Finals to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Good luck to all!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Ismaila Abdoulaye Ndiaye, #MSPSMT

The post Imagine Cup 2013 – Hungary Local Finals appeared first on Imagine Cup 2013.

Imagine Cup 2013 – Russia Local Finals

Omar Adrian Osorio Medina — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:07:30 +0000

We have the results from the local finals from this year’s host country for the Worldwide Finals of the Imagine Cup 2013!

On April 6 several teams from all around Russia competed for a spot in the finals in St. Petersburg this July.

In the Innovation Competition the winning team was team Out of Focus with project “Kinect Magic” that redefines the concept of presentations with the use of gestures and voice commands (via Kinect) to make a presentation dynamic and awesome. Team Quad Damage won the Games Competition for making a real wolrd First Person Shooter: Lasercraft. In a few words, Lasercraft is an augmented reality game that uses your cellphone as a complex sensor so you can see in the display a crosshair, your ammo count, a radar and your allies. In the World CitizenShip Competition team Genesis won with their project of the same name. Genesis is a kinect based system for children with nervous and musculoskeletal system disorders. It helps children’s rehabilitation trough games and feedback. Congratulations to all the teams and see you this July in St. Petersburg!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Omar Osorio Medina, #MSPSMT

Collaborators: Andrey Kolchanov & Vyacheslav Yudanov

The post Imagine Cup 2013 – Russia Local Finals appeared first on Imagine Cup 2013.

Imagine Cup 2013 – Nigeria Local Finals

Fatima Rashid — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:32:46 +0000

Microsoft West Africa hosted the Imagine Cup Nigeria local finals on April 9, 2013 at VCP Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos in partnership with Nokia, Dell and MainOne cable.

Imagine Cup 2013 Nigeria Finals

Meet the Judges of Nigeria local finals

Dele Akinsade, Microsoft
Tunji Eleso, Co-Creation Hub
Duke Obasi, Alliedsoft Technologies
Yinka Oni, Microsoft
Olumide Balogun, Nokia
Steve Araba, iBreathe Nigeria
Shole Lawani, Microsoft

Judges of Nigeria Finals 2013

Nigeria Local Finals Teams

Thirty teams submitted their entries of which ten teams got short-listed for the National Finals event in Lagos, Nigeria. The ten finalist teams were as follows:

Team Golympus
Team Dynamite
Team Eagle Inc.
Team Linfix
Team Nikao
Team i-Ace
Team Mercury
Team Life Saver
Team Safari
Team Pearl

Category Winners:

Games category: Team Golympus – Compventure
World Citizenship category: Team Lifesaver – CardioLife
Innovation category: Team Eagle Inc. – Windows On Wheels

Winners:

Team Life Saver, CardioLife – Winners.
Team Eagle Inc., Windows On Wheels – Runner up.
Team Nikao, Mini Satellite Management System – 2nd Runner up.

Congrats, Team Life Saver!

Team Life Saver consists of students from two different universities: Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) and Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU). The team presented project “CardioLife”, a solution to tackle heart attack by monitoring the heart readings on the fly via a Windows Phone and to provide a rehabilitation program for stroke patients using Kinect sensor technology. The team members are Adewale Adeyinka, Oluwole Michael, Afolabi Olamide and Akinlaja Solomon.

Special thanks to the students, teams and sponsors who contributed in successfully organizing the Imagine Cup 2013 Nigeria Local Finals. Here’s wishing the best for Team Life Saver on representing Nigeria at the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals to be held in July, 2013 in St. Petersburg, Russia!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Follow the official Microsoft Imagine Cup Channels:

Website: http://www.imaginecup.com/
Blog: http://www.imaginecup.com/Main/News
Twitter: https://twitter.com/imaginecup
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/microsoftimaginecup
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/imaginecup/

See more content from the MSPSMT online!

Blog: http://www.icsocialmediateam.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MSPSMT2013
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mspsmt
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/wwmsp
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mspsmt

Created by: Fatima Rashid, #MSPSMT

The post Imagine Cup 2013 – Nigeria Local Finals appeared first on Imagine Cup 2013.

Imagine Cup 2013 – Albania Local Finals

Ashley Perkins — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 04:06:50 +0000

In 2012, Albania first participated in the Imagine Cup competition and already has built the reputation for being the competition for technology students to participate in. Albania’s participation in the Imagine Cup is a collaboration between Microsoft Albania, the Ministry of Education and Science, the Minister of Innovation, Information and Communication Technology, and Project USAID-IT. The aim of the collaboration is to support technology and innovation and push economic and social development.

The 2013 Imagine Cup competition in Albania saw 25 universities compete and 16 teams from 7 of those universities were selected to compete in the local finals. The judging panel included several high profile members of government and members of the ICT industry from Albania and abroad. A benefit of having such high profile judges brought some great opportunities for competitors last year with most of the students competing received employment offers immediately following the winners announcement.

The local competition saw each competitor present high quality solutions which surpassed the expectations set by the judges and media attending. The top three places were all won by teams from the University of Tirana.

Taking first place and representing Albania at the 2013 Imagine Cup World Finals in Russia, was QBit who scored 903 out of 1000points. The team and their mentor presented a solution to improve the health system which impacts the community every day. They identified a major problem which is the speed, accuracy and availability of information for patients and medical staff which can affect a life or death situation. The solution presented assisted in providing accurate facts, and delivering data to medical staff in a format that can improve the information exchange.

Second place was taken by DoIT with a score of 895 out of 1000 points, and the team identified that information and education have a close relationship with English. However not every person knows how to read or write in English and there are a number of ways to learn a new language. The application which the team developed attempts at making it easy through helping people learn English through their first language.

Third place with a score of 881 out of 1000 points was won by Diamond. They identified a real problem affecting Albanian society which is Smoking. Currently as explained by the team, anti-smoking laws are promoted and implemented differently in Albania and the rate of smoking is very high. Their solution hopes to unify this and reduce the number of smokers.

Following with last year’s employment offers to finalists meetings have begun meetings with Albanian companies to discuss employment opportunities or training opportunities to further their knowledge of Microsoft technologies.

It’s a great result for students who aren’t just tackling big issues with their Imagine Cup teams but are also being recognised for their entrepreneurial thinking and drive.

I’m looking forward to meeting QBit at the 2013 Imagine Cup World Finals in Russia and seeing their progress from these local finals. Also best of luck to all other teams who took place in taking their projects further!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Ashley Perkins, #MSPSMT

The post Imagine Cup 2013 – Albania Local Finals appeared first on Imagine Cup 2013.

Imagine Cup 2013 – Peru Local Finals

Omar Adrian Osorio Medina — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 12:04:10 +0000

On April 4 2013, around 24 teams from 19 universities competed in the Peruvian Local Finals in order to win a spot to compete in the Worldwide finals to be held in Russia this July.

In the Innovation category the winning team was from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú with their project “Karaoke Smart”, a system which improves karaoke’s customer services involving technology in its processes. Based in the cloud, this system manages a communication channel between customers (via smartphones and tablets) and the karaoke establishment providing a reliable service to process information from anywhere and any time promoting better quality of service for customers.

The Games competition was won by students from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos with Greyland - A game set in a fictional universe, and more specifically in a galaxy called Navid’eko. According to this game, all planets are grey in this galaxy except for one located at the edge of the galaxy – Greyland.

And finally in the World Citizenship competition the winning team was from the Universidad Nacional San Luis Gonzaga de Ica with their project WIKSAYAY, a web application that helps keep track of a mother’s health development during pregnancy in order to prevent death and other high risks.

But of all these winning teams, Karaoke Smart won the top honour to represent Peru at the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia. Many congratulations to the winning team(s) and here’s wishing them the best!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

See more content from the MSPSMT online:
Blog: http://icsocialmediateam.com
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/MSPSMT2013
Twitter: http://twitter.com/mspsmt
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/wwmsp
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mspsmt

Created by: Omar Osorio Medina, #MSPSMT

The post Imagine Cup 2013 – Peru Local Finals appeared first on Imagine Cup 2013.

Imagine Cup 2013 – Venezuela Local Finals

Keven Hernandez — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:50:22 +0000

Joining the worldwide bandwagon in the search for the next great Imagine Cup idea, Venezuela recently executed its local finals on April 3, 2013. The local finals this year for Venezuela turned out to be great and exciting as 11 qualified teams battled it out to receive the prestigious honour of representing their country for this year’s Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals.

There were five teams who presented for the Citizenship category, four teams for Games, and two teams for Innovation. Check out the details of their innovative projects below:

Citizenship Finalists

Games Finalists

Innovation Finalists

This year, the jury included personalities from prestigious entrepreneurship organizations including the Wayra Venezuela General Manager, Hub Caracas and Ideas Project Director, Cloud Solution Architect of Microsoft LatAm and two journalists who own renowned technology blogs. There were also judges coming from the developers’ community such as personalities from various IT and OEM partners.

Microsoft Venezuela went ahead and created an app for the Venezuela local finals. This Windows 8 app was made to help in the voting process. Every judge had a Surface tablet with the app installed where they could view the criteria, the score sheet and a summary of the scores they gave for each team. Cool!

THE RESULTS

After a long day of presentations and deliberations, the judges were finally able to decide the winners for this year’s Imagine Cup local finals in Venezuela.

Team Lazarillo – Winners of Imagine Cup Venezuela Local Finals

Team Lazarillo of National Experimental University of Táchira was declared as the overall winner and will represent Venezuela in St. Petersburg this July for the Imagine Cup Worldwide finals!

Team Sign Call

Team Sign Call of National Experimental University of Táchira was the winner of the Citizenship category.

Team Guacamaya Studio

Team Guacamaya Studio of Central University of Venezuela won the Games category with their video game Therapie.

Team SMASoft of Nueva Esparta University were the winners of the Innovation category with their project SMAS.

Congratulations!

Best of luck to all the winners of this year’s Venezuela local finals! Congratulations as well to all the finalist teams for creating innovative projects. Hoping that the innovative ideas will be carried on forward and help in inspiring others to also step up to the challenge!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Kev Hernandez, #MSPSMT

The post Imagine Cup 2013 – Venezuela Local Finals appeared first on Imagine Cup 2013.

The US Imagine Cup Startup Bootcamp – Five days of knowledge, experience and fun!

Syed Asrarullah — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 14:43:13 +0000

There is something that the U.S. Imagine Cup team achieved that will go down in the history books – they successfully organized the first ever Imagine Cup Start-up Bootcamp! Conducted over a span of five days, this Start-up Bootcamp saw top entrepreneurs and educators commit to train the top fifteen applicants to the U.S. Imagine Cup Virtual Accelerator Program.

Earlier, the best U.S. student entrepreneurs submitted their ideas for the U.S. Imagine Cup Virtual Accelerator Program – a series of weekly virtual workshops to learn how to build their startup – and the top fifteen were invited to attend the in-person Startup Bootcamp held in Silicon Valley. All teams are now applying to the U.S. Imagine Cup 2013 Finals to be held on May 13, 2013.

Day 1 – Be Inspired!

Titled Be Inspired, Day 1 saw the participants of the bootcamp visit the offices of exciting start-ups like Yelp, Flixster, Task Rabbit and Younoodle meanwhile interacting with the founders, engineers and getting a feel of a ‘Day in the life at a Silicon Valley start-up’.

Day 2 – Build your Product

Day 2 was Build Your Product day, where the teams got down to business and started working on building their prototypes. They were mentored by fifteen top technical evangelists along the way. They later wrapped up their efforts for the day at StartX – Stanford University’s start-up accelerator.

Day 3 – Build your Business

Day 3 focused more on learning how to test an idea, create a business model and launching a start-up. Titled Build your Business, it was an intensive day that consisted of a class on how start-ups can be successful by constantly talking to customers and an interactive workshop to help teams to learn how to apply lean start-up methodology. A late night hackathon was the perfect end to the day.

Day 4 – Pitch your Start-up

The next day, Day 4, was an important one as it was all about pitching a start-up to investors including a highly interactive workshop that helped students create their start-up pitches. Many real-time investors came down to the bootcamp to interact with the participant teams about the types of funding and to evaluate each teams’ pitch which was later followed by them giving ‘direct’ feedback to the teams about their idea(s).

Day 5 – Fun, fun and more fun!

Day 5, the last day, was more fun and less work as one of Silicon Valley’s oldest start-up incubators hosted the final dinner/party night for all the attendees.

Energizing five days of pure geekery, interactions with top educators and entrepreneurs, a chance to build and test your product with real-time feedback plus the immense experience gained through all this (not to forget cool stuff like free Windows Phone 8 devices, Surface Pro tablets and a hike with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs) – you couldn’t have had asked for more!

Kudos to the US Imagine Cup Team for successfully conducting the first-ever Imagine Cup Start-up Bootcamp. We bet many more are on the way!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Syed Asrarullah, #MSPSMT

The post The US Imagine Cup Startup Bootcamp – Five days of knowledge, experience and fun! appeared first on Imagine Cup 2013.

Imagine Cup 2013 – Spain Local Finals

Omar Adrian Osorio Medina — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 18:28:12 +0000

Aaaaaand we have a winner! On April 4, 2013 Spain Local Finals took place and oh boy! They surely gave us something to talk about. Three teams of three universities (Granada University, Murcia University and Mondragón University) went to Madrid, where the local finals would later take place, to compete for a spot in the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia this July.

Here’s brief information about the three finalists, their projects and the competition results.

First we have project Remotion from the Mondragón University, this project earned Aitor Akizu, Ander Gordoa, Unai Alegre and Josu López the third place. Remotion is a videogame that mixes remote controlled cars with online competition. This project allows users from all around the world to log into the system and control real cars to race against other competitors. By using fixed cameras around the track, the player can keep an eye of his/her car performance. Very neat!

Remotion Project

Next in the list is project EducAR made by Rocío Rama, Alonso Gragera y Rubén Aguilar, three students from Granada University. This project earned them the competition’s second place and it is an educational tool that works with Augmented Reality and Kinect technologies. EducAr is a new way of teaching, making use of digital blackboards as it adds augmented reality functionalities to make the classroom a dynamic experience where teachers and students can interact in a natural way with the system.

EducAR Project

Finally we get to SRGX, a project made solely by a student from Murcia University: Sergio Rivas, who won the first place. So what makes SRGX so special? It is a platform that offers a combination of real time augmented reality in 3D and brain pattern detection offering applications in medicine, video games and much more.

Sergio modified a helmet to add the SRGX technology allowing the user to have a very rich experience from the world with the use of 3D cameras and using an electroencephalogram to detect brain patterns and use them as input so for example when you move your eyes to the right the cameras will move too! Pure awesomeness!

SGRX Project

The team representing SGRX was chosen to represent Spain at the Imagine Cup 2013 WorldWide Finals to be held from July 8-11 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Many congratulations to the winning team! We’ll be watching closely.

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Omar Osorio Medina, #MSPSMT

The post Imagine Cup 2013 – Spain Local Finals appeared first on Imagine Cup 2013.

Imagine Cup 2013 Gulf – U.A.E Local Finals

Abir Yahyaoui — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:58:55 +0000

Last Thursday on March 28^th2013, United Arab Emirates was host to the Imagine Cup 2013 Local Finals also known as Imagine Cup Gulf. There were top eight teams competing for a chance to represent UAE at the WorldWide Finals in St. Petersburg, Russia this July.

The participating students stepped up to the challenge and created innovative solutions that they later presented in front of a large audience and a panel of esteemed judges.

The event took place in the Auditorium of Emirates Headquarters, Al Garhoud from 10:30 AM to 05:00 PM.

After the opening keynote presentations (Microsoft, Emirates, Nokia), Team 1 AEMA Creations were the first to introduce their project “Optimized”, a solution to empower farmers and optimize agriculture grow.

Then the 2nd team InnoSpell presented their project StoryWeave (TSP), a Social Application that lets users partake in a joint story development venture.

CoTravelers Team presented their project called CoTraveler which is a mobile application provided by an airline to its travelers in order is to assist them through various stages of the air trip.

Team Cenna was the fourth team to present their innovative project Cenna App, a mobile application running on Windows Phone 8 that helps fight against obesity and obesity-related diseases.

The fifth team, M.S.A Team, presented their project called H.E.A.R which is a robot powered by Windows Azure and Kinect technology that helps people in different fields. The main concentration of the project is helping people as a virtual Medical Doctor or Robotic Assistance for the elderly and people with disabilities.

Team 6 presented their project Jigsaw Journey.

Alpha Team was next who presented their project Pick’n’serve which aims to facilitate the communication between volunteering agencies, charity organizations and those seeking to volunteer.

Finally, 4FEGI Team (4 Future Emirates Games Innovators) presented their game Al Bat-tal.

After the presentations were done, the excitement was moutning as everyone waited for the results to be announced! All were wondering about the lucky ones who will take the flight and have the honour to represent their country in the Imagine Cup World Wide Finals.

Before announcing the Imagine Cup Gulf Winner, there was another winner, the Cotraveller Team who took the Emirates Group Travel Innovation Award.

In company of such briliant ideas and projects, M.S.A Team with their project H.E.A.R was announced as the local finals winner and they will be competing with other teams from all over the world next July (8-11 July) at the Imagine Cup 2013 WorldWide Finals in St. Petersburg, Russia.

M.S.A Team members

Masoud Dorrikhteh
Shahin Basiretzadeh
Abdullah Sh.

Here’s wishing the winning team – Best of luck!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Abir Yahyaoui, #MSPSMT

The post Imagine Cup 2013 Gulf – U.A.E Local Finals appeared first on Imagine Cup 2013.

Microsoft Student Partners Program Now Offering Open Enrollment!

Michelle Fleming — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:24:26 +0000

The Microsoft Student Partner (MSP) Program is an opportunity for students to act as liaisons between Microsoft and their universities. The MSP Program is active in over 80 countries around the world. MSPs represent their global region and their local campus as Microsoft technology experts.

The MSP program showcases students on the rise. The MSP program is for students who realize the best technology careers come to those chase their dreams.

Microsoft Student Partners (MSPs) are social and friendly students who like to meet new people. MSPs are the game changers of the future. They think and act boldly.

Check out MSPs in Action!

As an MSP you will:

build apps and demos
demonstrate the newest technologies and host tech events on your campus
acquire the tools and training to lead technology discussions on your campus
build your global network with industry experts
connect with like-minded students and faculty around the world
attend trainings from Microsoft leaders to enhance your knowledge about cutting edge technologies
be the one on your campus with insight and answers on Microsoft technologies

The MSP Program is recruiting new MSPs in the following regions:

Latin America

Asia Pacific

Middle East and Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Western Europe

To Apply:

Visit www.microsoftstudentpartners.com
Select your country – click on LEARN MORE
Complete the Online application form: https://www.microsoftstudentpartners.com/Registration/Apply

We look forward to hearing from you!

The post Microsoft Student Partners Program Now Offering Open Enrollment! appeared first on Imagine Cup 2013.

Imagine Cup 2013 – Iceland Local Finals

Ismaila Abdoulaye Ndiaye — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:27:35 +0000

DREAM IT. BUILD IT. LIVE IT

The year 2012 was the first time that Iceland had a team competing in Imagine Cup. Team Radiant went all the way to the finals in Australia and finished in the top 5 in XBOX/Windows gaming category out of 506 teams.

This year, Iceland held its second local finals on March 9th 2013 at the Reykjavik University. The Imagine Cup Adventure started with the Idea Cup where students from any department can submit an idea based on the millennium goals.

This year saw a part of the Imagine Cup competition criteria being changed, but the two most popular categories are still live: Citizenship and Gaming. In total, there were nine projects and three of them are now participating in the Online Judging for a chance to compete in the worldwide finals in Russia.

The local Imagine Cup 2013 winner – Guidance gaming

Team “Guidance Gaming” with their game Manic Munchkins was the winner in the Gaming category. “Manic Munchkins” is a computer game built on a 3D-platform for Windows 8. The game will help children ages 6-12 better understand the importance of regular exercise, enable comprehension of nutritional facts on food containers and recognition of healthy meals. The focus is to educate children whilst maintaining a game facade (too many educational games come across as educational material as opposed to just being games). The game uniquely encourages players to engage in outdoor activities by offering children in-game rewards for time spent playing outside or doing other healthy activities.

The local Citizenship winner and Idea Cup 1st price winner – Optimizing Expenditure on cycling roads using the GPS data collected by cyclists.

The local Citizenship winner and Idea Cup 1st price winner

Once again this year, students impressed the judges with their innovation and enthusiasm towards a better world through quality projects.

We offer our best wishes to all of winners for their Online participation and, we hope so, look foward to the Imagine Cup 2013 WorldWide Finals in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Good luck to all!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Ismaila Abdoulaye Ndiaye, #MSPSMT

The post Imagine Cup 2013 – Iceland Local Finals appeared first on Imagine Cup 2013.

Imagine Cup 2013 – New Zealand Local Finals

Ana Cristina Rocha Robleto — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:55:39 +0000

ImagineCup 2013 – New Zealand Local Finals

The Microsoft Imagine Cup 2013 New Zealand Local Finals were held on March 24-25, 2013. Around 549 students submitted their ideas for Imagine Cup 2013 of whom 24 teams were selected to compete in the local finals. The competitors were given four months to work hard and make their dream a reality by building functional prototypes of their technology solutions.

“We went in search of a problem that was widespread, that affected us personally, and that we could solve with current technologies. We truly believe that our system will change attitudes and behaviours.” – Ming Cheuk, New Zealand’s national team InfinityTek leader.

During the two days of the local finals event, the participating teams presented their projects in front of 27 judges across all three categories.

Day 1. Team Presentations

The Judging Panel:

World Citizenship

David Huebner, U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand & Samoa.
Candace Kinser, CEO of the NZICT Group.

Innovation

Karl Von Randow, Global iOS Dev Legend.
Antony Royal, Chair of Ngā Pu Wāea National Māori Broadband Working Group.
Nick Shewring, Co-founder of The BizDojo.
Sacha Judd, Partner at Buddle Findlay & organiser of Girl Geek Dinners NZ.

Games

Vaughan Knight, Developer Relations Manager at Nokia.
Harley Ogier, Reviews Editor at PC World.
Matt Maguire, Editor of Gameplanet.

The award ceremony was held at the Rangatira Theatre, Auckland Central with more than 450 V.I.P. guests in attendance including business executives, software developers, startup founders, media from print and online publications, judges from Day 1, mentors of all the teams, Microsoft customers & partners as well as friends and families of the participants.

The Winners:

Team My Storyteller won the Innovation category, with their Windows 8 application that connects families through the magic of storytelling – using video recording, customisable stories/graphics and the power of Windows Azure.

Team QuakeTown won the Games category, with their Windows 8 game designed to raise awareness of earthquake-proof construction methods while inspiring youth to get involved in the field of Civil Engineering.

Team InfinityTek won the World Citizenship category with their UVsense™ sun-exposure monitoring system, and they were selected to represent New Zealand in the World Citizenship Global Finals in St. Petersburg, Russia (July 8-11, 2013).

Many congratulations to all participating teams!!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Ana Cristina Rocha, #MSPSMT

The post Imagine Cup 2013 – New Zealand Local Finals appeared first on Imagine Cup 2013.

Imagine Cup 2013 – Oman Local Finals

Fatima Rashid — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 21:23:37 +0000

Oman hosted the Imagine Cup 2013 local finals on March 20, 2013 for the second time in the country . More than 400 Omani students registered for Imagine Cup 2013. Five teams out of nine qualified for the local finals event. The event started with a short video about Imagine Cup followed by a brief introduction about the judges.

Imagine Cup 2013 Oman Local Finals – Judges

Each team was given a specific time frame to showcase their project: 5 minutes to prepare the stage, 15 minutes to present their project and another 5 minutes to answer judges’ questions. According to the rules, no extra time was allotted. The stage was prepared with two screens to display the time, one of them was placed in front of the team and the other one in front of the judges.

Team ARMZ | Project ARMZ
Team AnaCode | Project I Found It
Team Imagine Xone | Project Pregnanion
Team Thrizers | Project Readx
Team ARMZ | Project VolunteerBook

Team: ARMZ
Project: “ARMZ“, a Windows Phone app which deals with the user’s requests, by speaking or typing, to provide them all the information about a given topic.
Technologies used: Visual studio, Azure, Blend, .Net, Windows Phone SDK.
Institute: Sultan Qaboos University -College of Applied Science, Nizwa.
Joined Imagine Cup previously? Yes, one member ( Zuhoor Bani Sa’ad – team Grawesome | IC 2012).

Team: AnaCode
Project: “I Found It“, a social media hub which helps the user to write an idea and find other interested users & specialists to talk with them and start building the idea.
Technologies used: Windows 8 SDK, Windows Phone SDK, ASP.NET, Azure, Skydrive, SQL Server.
Institute: Sultan Qaboos University.
Joined Imagine Cup previously? Yes, two members (Omaima and Nouf – team Grawesome | IC 2012)

Team: Imagine Xone
Project: “Pregnanion“, an app for pregnant women. It supports different languages, so the women all around the world can use it to have a good health for them and the baby, as well.
Technologies used: Windows 8 SDK, Windows Phone 8 SDK, Visual Studio 2012, Bing maps,8) Nokia maps , BingAds.
Institute: Sultan Qaboos University.
Joined Imagine Cup previously? Yes, only 2 members (Malik and Osama – team Brothers forever | IC 2011)

Team: Thrizers
Project: “Readx“, a Windows 8 app which aims to help dyslexic children. It helps them to deal with the real world. Besides, it allows the children’s family to know the children’s level by asking some questions when the app is opened.
Technologies used: Visual Studio, Expression Blend, SQL , Windows 8 SDK.
Institute: Higher College of Technology, Muscat.
Joined Imagine Cup previously? No.

Team: ARMZ
Project: “VolunteerBook“, an app which allows the user to know more details about the volunteer activities related to health, education, environment and many other fields.
Technologies used: Microsoft Visual Studio, Azure, Blend, .NET, Windows Phone SDK, Windows 8 SDK.
Institute: Sultan Qaboos University - College of Applied Science, Nizwa.
Joined Imagine Cup previously? Yes, one member ( Zuhoor Bani Sa’ad - team Grawesome | IC 2012 )

The winning teams from Oman at Imagine Cup 2013 Local Finals were announced as below:

3rd Place winner: Project VolunteerBook | Team ARMZ
2nd Place winner: Project Pregnanion | Team Imagine Xone
1st Place winner: Project Readx | Team Thrizers

Congrats, team Thrizers!

Team Thrizers consists of 3 members: Marwa alHabsi, Safa alMukhaini and Asya alJabri They didn’t expect to win the local finals as they faced a timing issue while preparing the stage (The time was over and they were not able to finish their presentation). However, against all odds, they still won the challenge!

Check out this interesting video about the participant teams, judges and the winning team.

A huge shout-out to all the participating teams in Imagine Cup 2013 | Oman for their inspiring efforts, hoping that they carry on their innovative ideas and projects forward. Thanks is also due to the Imagine Cup 2013 Oman Finals sponsors especially:

All the best Team Thrizers! Hope you make it big at the Imagine Cup 2013 World Wide Finals (8-11 July) in St. Petersburg, Russia!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Fatima Rashid, #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013 – Korea Local Finals

Ana Cristina Rocha Robleto — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 06:14:18 +0000

With the message “This is not the end of your journey. This is the Beginning of your journey“, Imagine Cup 2013 Korea Local Finals were celebrated on March 14 -15, 2013.

Imagine Cup 2013 Korea Local Finals

Around 94 competitors and over a thousand attendees witnessed some of the most outstanding projects in a competition that had more of a festival feeling. During the two days, 20 teams shared their ideas on how they are trying to save the world, hoping to be not only an inspiration but heroes to those who haven’t stepped up to the challenge.

Imagine Cup 2013 Korea Local Finals: Day 1.

This year the top teams for each categories were:

Games Category: CoreStyle- Save Earth, Save Us.
Innovation Category: Lumos – Lumos
Citizenship: LaonHaze- A-Live

Team Lumos was chosen as Korea’s national team to present at the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals in St. Petersburg, Russia (July 8-11, 2013). We’ll hear more about them and their project in the coming weeks.

Congratulations to all of the teams in Korea who participated in Imagine Cup! We hope you enjoyed the experience and will continue to inspire students all over the world!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Follow the Official Microsoft Imagine Cup Channels:
Website: http://www.imaginecup.com/
Blog: http://www.imaginecup.com/Main/News ..
Twitter: https://twitter.com/imaginecup
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/microsoftimaginecup
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/imaginecup/

Created by: Ana Cristina Rocha, #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013 – Croatia Local Finals

Qichao Chen — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 04:12:21 +0000

This year’s local finals of Imagine Cup in Croatia took place in Zagreb and ended with great success. There were seven finalists participating and, of course, only one of them was granted the opportunity to present at the global finals in St. Petersburg. Surely, all finalists had quite impressive projects but the one that stood out from the rest was “AuThink”.

“AuThink” is project that was developed by a group of 4 students and a mentor who won the competition. They had the most impressive application that falls in the category of “World Citizenship”. What they did was, they took a major world problem, known as Autism and developed a software solution that will help children across the world deal with this disease in a significantly better manner than they could before. The application covers many aspects of the healing process and it is highly adaptable to any autistic child and his or her specific condition. Keeping in mind that every autistic child is different and autism is a disease that takes many shapes and forms, a highly customizable solution to a disease as such, may be just the right thing to make the lives of these children better.

Furthermore, another project that stood out this year was “cQuest”. The team that developed this application won the prize in the category of “Innovation “and they were granted the possibility of further on-line participation in the competition.

The reason why they were granted this privilege is because they developed a highly eye-catching and interesting game that is designed to bring people together through social interactions and help people in learning by solving various quests. The most interesting thing worth mentioning about the game is that it is customizable and it can be adapted to any learning environment. For example, any university anywhere in the world can create its own quests and learning environments, making it adequate for the needs of their students.

Lastly, a fun fact worth mentioning about Imagine Cup Croatia 2013 is that there was a group of very young participants presenting an application. In fact, to make it even more interesting, it was a team of two 17-yearolds that are currently in their second year of high school. These two younglings developed an application that uses voice recognition to control various devices around the house. The application is intended to help people with disabilities in handling things around the house such as the TV, air conditioning or a radio. It can integrate the management of all these household devices into one phone, making it a universal remote with voice recognition that easily controls all of them. The name of the application is “Pozor”. A rough English translation would be “Warning”.

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Qichao Chen, #MSPSMT

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Imagine Cup 2013 – Ireland Local Finals

Michael Quandt — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:30:22 +0000

It’s that time again, the time when teams gather to decide who will represent their country at the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals (now in Russia).

Leading the pack with an incredibly successful event viewed by over a thousand spectators was the 2011 Software Design winners: Ireland. There were some big changes to the Imagine Cup competition this year, but that didn’t phase students in Ireland who turned out in force to compete. 68 competitors formed 17 teams, all competing to be one of the 3 category winners, and ultimately 1 national team.

Finding the Finalists

On the first day 17 teams assembled at the European Development Centre to try and convince a panel of judges why they made the best product in their category. Judging them was a selection of industry peers and experts.

The Judges

Damini Kumar
European Ambassador for Creativity & Innovation
Eoin Harris
Game Designer – bitSmith Games
Jonathan Lynch
Irish Imagine Cup Winner 2010 – Digit Game Studios
Nicola Nevin
Irish Imagine Cup Winner 2010
Andrea Magnorsky
Co-founder, BatCat Games
Pat Meegan
Director, Localization, Microsoft Studios
James McNamara
Imagine Cup 2011 Worldwide Champion – CTO of CleverMiles
Stephen Howell
Lecturer & Creator of Kinect with Scratch
Etain Kidney
Researcher & Lecturer – Marketing & Entrepreneurship
Mark Magennis
Director – Irish Centre for Inclusive Technology

The Perfect Venue

The second day saw everyone move to the Aviva Stadium (Ireland’s National Stadium) for the final competition at the Games Reimagined conference – hosted by Microsoft Ireland. Over 400 students and professional developers were joined by 1000+ online viewers to see the top three teams from each category pitch to be the national team. (Talk about pressure!)

The Winners

Innovation – Ninja Turtles

Ninja Turtles (National College of Ireland Maynooth) created a mobile app called ‘Spotter‘, which takes advantage of NFC to transmit travel information between not just devices but also languages. The use of NFC allows travellers to share information without the internet, which can be very expensive with roaming charges. They saw the need for an intuitive translation service in this highly global business world, and backed by a strong business plan targeting global travellers and a social network where “Spots” can be shared between friends and fellow travellers, they took the top prize for Innovation at these finals.

Games – ClockinRock

Team ClockinRock (Dundalk Institute of Technology) used Microsoft Kinect to let players fight each other with magic and full body motion control. Their game, Liminal Magibrawl is a two player fighting game where opponents can get power-ups and fight each other using different types of magic.

Team Ninja Turtles

World Citizenship – RUOK

RUOK (Are You Okay) from the Sligo Institute of Technology monitors older people and tracks their physical fitness using a mixture of Skype, Kinect and Windows Phone. Users can send health alerts, undertake exercises and enjoy an enhanced social TV experience called as TAG TV which allows the older person to remotely join his/her friends and family and watch TV together, which helps ensure that they can easily receive social contact even if they’re isolated.

Team RUOK – Ireland 2013 National Team

Ireland 2013

Team RUOK was chosen as the national team to represent Ireland in St Petersburg Russia in July at the Worldwide Finals. Sligo Institute of Technology returns to the worldwide finals after their victory in 2011 with Team Hermes, showing that they know what they’re doing and aim to win. With a solution that uses many different technologies to help enhance the social and physical well-being of the elderly, team RUOK is ready for Russia.

Good luck at the worldwide finals!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Created by: Michael Quandt, #MSPSMT

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The Road to St. Petersburg – Imagine Cup 2013 Competition kicks off

Syed Asrarullah — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:28:23 +0000

Microsoft Imagine Cup is the world’s premier student technology competition. Often referred to as the ‘Oscars of Innovation’, it serves as the platform for the brightest young minds across the world to assemble under one roof with a common motive – to create a better tomorrow with the help of software technology. Ever since its inaugural launch in 2003, Microsoft Imagine Cup has seen ten venues (right from Barcelona, Spain to Sydney Australia), 1.65 million participants and thousands of ground breaking software applications and games committed to help improve education, healthcare, environment and more. From an app that helps prevent road accidents to a game that teaches about malaria, from helping speech-impaired people to communicate to being featured on TIME on the ‘Best Inventions of the Year’ list – Imagine Cup has seen it all.

In its eleventh year, Microsoft Imagine Cup 2013 promises to be a unique experience for one and all with many notable changes like focusing on just three core competitions: World Citizenship, Games and Innovation, increase in the prize money (more than US $300,000), no elimination round in the Worldwide Finals allowing finalist teams to live through the complete Imagine Cup experience not to forget the memorable opportunity to rub shoulders with great minds from various parts of the world.

“I wish there had been an Imagine Cup when I was growing up. It gets people involved in seeing that software is changing the world” – Bill Gates, Microsoft Chairman

To be held in the city of St. Petersburg, Russia from 8^th – 11^th July 2013, the latest edition of Microsoft Imagine Cup carries the theme of ‘Dream it. Build it. Live it’ and has social impact, gaming, innovation and entrepreneurship running deep through its veins. Often referred to as the cultural capital of Russia, St. Petersburg, the second largest Russian city, is opulent in historical architecture and elegant in literary culture with many important must-visit places like The Hermitage Museum (one of the largest and oldest museum in the world), the majestic Church of the Savior on Blood, the fascinating boat rides along River Neva with a breathtaking view et al. This lively city boasts of youthful and ever-helpful locals and a legendary nightlife where folks can enjoy fine dining, opera, circus performances or ballet almost any day (The Petersburg School of Ballet is deservedly named as one of the best in the world), thus justifying the fact the every inch of St. Petersburg breathes the theme ‘Dream it. Build it. Live it’.

The last date to form a team for one of the core competitions and to sign up to compete for top honors at the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals is March 15^th 2013. Hurry up! Register your team and your idea at Microsoft Imagine Cup 2013 and become a game-changer! Go through the official rules for understanding this year’s competition, read the FAQs to answer lingering questions in your head or in short, simply arrive at the Imagine Cup 2013 website and you’ll find all the information you need. It’s not too late to win BIG!

Follow us – the MSP Social Media Team through our social media properties for important information and updates pertaining to Imagine Cup 2013. We’ll be your best friends during the Worldwide finals in July 2013 as we capture your exciting moments in photos and videos, blog your story, tweet your progress and make sure that the world is aware of your good efforts as an Imagine Cup participant. Join the Imagine Cup ship now and help make this world a better place to live.

In short, John Scott Tynes – Imagine Cup Competition Manager, sums it up in the best way:

“Imagine Cup is the beginning of a lifelong journey for a young entrepreneur, inventor, designer, developer or innovator.”

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Follow the Official Microsoft Imagine Cup Channels:
Website: http://www.imaginecup.com/
Blog: http://www.imaginecup.com/blogs/defau …
Twitter: https://twitter.com/imaginecup
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/microsoftimaginecup
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/imaginecup/

See more content from the MSPSMT online!
Blog: http://www.icsocialmediateam.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MSPSMT2013
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mspsmt
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/wwmsp
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Created by: Syed Asrarullah, #MSPSMT

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Karaoke Kraziness at Imagine Cup 2012!!!

Benjamin — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 10:09:04 +0000

For the competitors, Imagine Cup is serious business but it’s not without some time for fun! One of the innovative festivities for this year’s Imagine Cup was a special evening of karaoke at the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Center. A unique moment of joy where students from around the world with various musical backgrounds meet to sing together. Giggles guaranteed!

The post Karaoke Kraziness at Imagine Cup 2012!!! appeared first on Imagine Cup 2013.

Imagine Cup 2013

Imagine Cup 2013 – Lebanon Local Finals

Imagine Cup 2013 – South Africa Local Finals

Imagine Cup 2013 – Portugal Local Finals

Imagine Cup 2013 – Bangladesh Local Finals

IMAGINE CUP 2013 – POLISH LOCAL FINALS

Imagine Cup 2013 – West and Central Africa Local Finals

Jury:

It has ARRIVED!!! The Microsoft Student Partner and Imagine Cup Alumni Program Launches Today!

Imagine Cup 2013 – Palestine Local Finals

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Follow the official Microsoft Imagine Cup Channels:

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/imaginecup/

See more content from the MSPSMT online!

Imagine Cup 2013 – Ukraine Local Finals

Imagine Cup 2013 – Ecuador Local Finals

You are the STORY!

Imagine Cup 2013 – Greece Local Finals

Eleni Rachaniotou - DPE Lead,

Fotis Draganidis - General Manager of Microsoft Innovation Center,

Leontios Hatzileontiadis - Professor at the Aristotle University,

Yiannis Vlahoyiannis - Bugsense founder,

George Kasselakis - Openfund partner,

Loukas Pilitsis - Fund Manager PJ Tech Catalyst Fund

Panagiotis Markidis - Journalist at Proto Thema.

Imagine Cup 2013: Pakistan Local Finals (Part 1)

Imagine Cup 2013 Pakistan National Winner:

Category-wise Winners of Imagine Cup 2013 Pakistan Finals:

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Follow the official Microsoft Imagine Cup Channels:

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/imaginecup/

See more content from the MSPSMT online!

Imagine Cup 2013 – Belgium Local Finals

Imagine Cup 2013 – Australian Local Finals

Imagine Cup 2013 – Tunisia Local Finals

Imagine Cup 2013 – Japan Local Finals

Team Breakdown

The Judges

The Winners

Imagine Cup 2013 – Armenia Local Finals

The Winners

Games Category

Imagine Cup 2013 – Uganda Local Finals

Imagine Cup 2013 – Germany Local Finals

And the winners are…

You are the STORY!

Imagine Cup 2013 – India Local Finals

Imagine Cup 2013 – Cyprus Local Finals

You are the STORY!

Imagine Cup 2013 – China Local Finals

Follow the official Microsoft Imagine Cup Channels:

Website: http://www.imaginecup.com/

Blog: http://www.imaginecup.com/Main/News

Twitter: http://twitter.com/imaginecup

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/microsoftimaginecup

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/imaginecup/

See more content from the MSPSMT online:

Blog: http://icsocialmediateam.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MSPSMT2013

Twitter: http://twitter.com/mspsmt

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/wwmsp

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mspsmt

Imagine Cup 2013 – Hungary Local Finals

Imagine Cup 2013 – Russia Local Finals

Imagine Cup 2013 – Nigeria Local Finals

Meet the Judges of Nigeria local finals

Nigeria Local Finals Teams

Thirty teams submitted their entries of which ten teams got short-listed for the National Finals event in Lagos, Nigeria. The ten finalist teams were as follows:

Category Winners:

Winners:

Congrats, Team Life Saver!

You are the STORY!

Road to Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals 2013, St. Petersburg | Russia

Follow the official Microsoft Imagine Cup Channels:

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/imaginecup/

See more content from the MSPSMT online!

Imagine Cup 2013 – Albania Local Finals

Imagine Cup 2013 – Peru Local Finals

Imagine Cup 2013 – Venezuela Local Finals

Blog: http://icsocialmediateam.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MSPSMT2013