Tera Kull (MIT Recruiter) and I worked closely with MIT (a HUGE thanks to Brandon Muramatsu) to launch the Kinected Experiences IAP Course at MIT! We’ve held many events at different schools in the past, but I think this is one of my favorites to date!

Day 1: Windows Kinect Development

Day 2: Windows Phone Development

Day 3: Wind8ws and HTML5 Development

This is the poster I created (yes, using Powerpoint) for the event which was displayed all over campus.

We kicked off the day by announcing many of the exciting socially responsible competitions to which this course can lead. They include:

• MIT iCampus - The iCampus Student Prize recognizes the innovative and creative application of technology that improves living and learning at MIT
  
• MIT Ideas Global Challenge - IDEAS Global Challenge is an annual invention and entrepreneurship competition that awards up to $10,000 per team for innovative service projects that positively impact underserved communities.
  
• Microsoft Imagine Cup - The Microsoft Imagine Cup is the world’s premier student technology competition. We invite all eligible students to use their imagination and passion to create a technology solution that addresses the Imagine Cup 2012 theme: Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems.
  
• Big App on Campus - Attention US university students: Have you ever dreamed of going to SXSW? Do you like pure, bad-a**rock & roll? Ever wanted an exclusive concert experience (backstage passes, dinner with the band)? Would you like to have an extra $15k in your pocket?

What’s cool about this course is that everything you learn in these 3 days can give you the tools, knowledge, and connections leading to other opportunities that deal with socially responsible themes!

Back to Day 1 and the Kinect Development Workshop!

Brain Peek, who writes a lot of Coding4Fun articles, integrated plenty of Visual Studio 2010 and C# learnings with the Kinect Quickstart Videos (http://channel9.msdn.com/series/KinectSDKQuickstarts/).

Some of the cool topics cool topics covered by the Quickstart Videos that can help you get started…

• Installing and Using the Kinect Sensor
• Skeletal Tracking Fundamentals
• Camera Fundamentals

You can download the Kinect for Windows SDK Beta 2 here.

Brian Peek also went through code samples from the Coding4Fun Kinect Toolkit, which is filled with useful helper methods to make your life easier.

He also introduced the

• New Visual Studio Productivity Power Tools available which simplifies find, adds middle-wheel scrolling, Remove and sort imports for Visual Basic, and more!
• NuGet, which is a Visual Studio extension that makes it easy to install and update open source libraries and tools in Visual Studio.

During lunch, we had a some special guests talk about their current projects…

• Tim Fu, CEO of Home Team Therapy
• Zeb Kimmel, former Engagement Manager at McKinsey, and Founder of an upcoming unnamed startup
• Annie and Alex Ryu, Founders of RemindaVax. They placed 4th in Imagine Cup.
• Walter Somol, Microsoft Director of Technical Outreach at NERD.

Tim announcing the new Kinect Meetup in Cambridge, MA

Zeb talking about his new Kinect related startup

Annie and Alex discussing their idea for Imagine Cup and socially responsible app idea.

After lunch, Brian continued walking through the rest of the Kinect Quickstarts.

But wait, there’s more!

Thanks to Tera’s awesome connections, she was able to find an MIT Alumus, Ed Giamo, who happens to be a Product Unit Manager for Kinect for Windows, and he generously donated a bunch of Kinect devices to the course.

This is what I like to call the OPRAH WINFREY moment…

ALL ATTENDEES RECEIVED A KINECT DEVICE!

“You get a Kinect… YOU get a kinect!!”

Thank you, Ed Giamo!

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of everyone with their new Kinect devices, but you can only imagine the pleasant surprise!

Day 2 recap to follow.