We've received a lot of positive feedback from our faculty contacts about the Imagine Cup this year. Just to recap why it's such a great year:

• More competition focus in the UK including great prizes
• Easier to get involved in the Software Design (just an idea to start). All your teams can enter rather than having to pick a couple to represent your institution
• Job opportunities for all UK competitors

Now, back to this post. One of the hardest things is to get all your students registering. We have produced a guide with some assets to help you do that but the feedback is that awareness is a great first step now I need to sit a bunch of them in the room and get them registering. Here is Mark's 5 step plan in doing that:

Use a lab session or book a lab for your class to come to

Holding a physical event is one of the best ways to maximise student engagement in the competition. So, by grabbing 30 minutes of a large audience of students at a lab session you are already going to be kick starting their interest and ideas around the Imagine Cup theme this year ("the environment").

Using proctors or Microsoft Student Partners is also a great way of running a lab exercise.

Have them register

www.imaginecup.co.uk - take the fun quiz and then register for the Imagine Cup (and if interested the HPC competition).

Which competitions?

There are 9 diverse competitions in this year's competition so I would direct students depending on their interest to enter multiple competitions.

• Top groups of students should definitely enter the Software Design competition. This will give them great software engineering/development skills, entrepreneurship and presentation training if they get through to Round 2 (and if they have a great idea that is pretty likely).
• Individuals (or everyone in the lab) should enter the IT challenge. It's a great quiz on all things IT and technology.
• Then on interest area: There are competitions around Game development, Embedded technologies, UI/Interface Design and creative subjects such as Photography or Short Film

Helping them compete

We have a competitors guide that you can download for them OR if you are quick by emailing in a request (ukacinfo@microsoft.com), we can send you some hard copies.