On Campuses, Firenze for this year is being kickstarted in selected universities.

This year the universities invited so far are: Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, New York University, Ohio State, U of Michigan and Duke.

Other universities that want to be considered - well essentially should have steller Business (MBA), Design and Engineering programs - along with some student leaders/group wanting to run the program in their universities - email me through this blog.

Timeline

Student Leader perspective

October 10^th – Student leaders get official Firenze Invitations emails and reach out to schools of engineering/Sciences, business, Design/Arts/Architecture/Music/Drama

October 15^th – Student leaders start announcing Firenze to the univ

Oct 15^th – Nov 1^st – MS Program Leaders work with Student leaders in weekly conference calls to help get 8 teams signed per university

November 1^st - Nov 10^th – Student leaders help form atleast 8 teams per university

January 10^th – Student leaders submit Firenze teams to Their MS Team lead (including NDA and participation forms signed by the students)

(Participant perspective)

Nov 10^th – Names of Firenze participants submitted to MS

Nov 15^th – Firenze Round 1 Starts in school

Nov 29^th – Dec 3^rd: Innovation Workshops run on campuses

Jan 12^th: University Prelim Rounds end. Student artefacts sent to Microsoft

Jan 19^th: University Finalists announced

January 24^th & 25^th : University Finals conducted through LiveMeeting

Jan 28^th: University Winners Announced

Feb 6^th: Firenze Innovation Finals in Redmond

Participation Guidelines

·         Each Student team will have atleast 3 members – but no more than 4 members in it.

·         Each Student team will have one student each full enrolled from the Art/Design/Media/Music/Hospitality/ School/program, Business school/program (MBA), Engineering/Science school/program (that is 3 students right there)

·         The 4^th optional member of the team can be from any program at the university.

·         All students should be fully enrolled for their degree program and eligible for internship/full time job eligible for the campus interviewing rules (some univs have specific company sponsored students who might not be candidates for campus interviewing and/or some univs have rules on parttime students who might not have enough credits yet for internship interviewing). While the competition has nothing to do with recruiting – this filter is just in place to ensure zero conflict with the career center of the university. When in doubt – talk to your career center counseler and we will work to make this a zero conflict situation J

·         Teams can have student representation from both the undergraduate and graduate programs of any department.