As you know from my previous blog posts and presentations A Microsoft certification confirms to everyone, employers, clients, and your peers. That you're a technical expert with proven skills and abilities.

Gaining a Microsoft Certification also makes you part of the elite community of Microsoft Certified Professionals (MCP), which allows you access to exclusive Microsoft resources and benefits such as the MCP member website, career-building tools, and training.

Find the right IT certification

Click a category and you’ll see your certification options below.

At TechEd Europe

In the Certification Center at TechEd Europe 2013, you'll have access to onsite training, Exam Prep sessions, and practice tests, as well as the assistance of MCT Ambassadors who have passed multiple exams.

So take this opportunity to gain certification and also sit two exams for the price of one or simply take the 50% discount. This opportunity is only available to registered TechEd 2013 attendees.

Learn more and sign up to take a Microsoft Certification exam at TechEd Europe.

Not registered yet for TechEd 2013?

Register today and start planning your ideal conference schedule! Register for TechEd Europe

More resources

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151404444143549&set=a.382083588548.167649.318852903548&type=1&theater

TechEd Forum: http://channel9.msdn.com/forums/techedeu

Event Site: http://europe.msteched.com/Certification

Not attending TechEd Europe - take your second shot exam now

Retake an exam for free before May 31 and save 15% on certification packs*

Prove that you have the knowledge and skills in the most current and specialized technologies and solutions by earning a Microsoft Certification. Passing the exams needed to demonstrate those skills can be tough, but for a limited time, you’ll get a free second chance to succeed.

* Redemption of both the initial exam and free retake exam are subject to seat availability.

Here's how it works:

• For Microsoft Certification packs: In addition to saving at least 15 percent on the cost of the certification exams, you get one free retake for each exam you don’t pass the first time.

• For single exams with Second Shot: If you fail your exam the first time you take it, you may use the same voucher for your retake exam.

Read the FAQ to find out more.

STEP 1 – REGISTER for your Second Shot voucher.
STEP 2 – SCHEDULE and pay for your exam at Prometric using your voucher code.
STEP 3 – TAKE EXAM
STEP 4 – RETAKE EXAM  If you do not pass, use your voucher code to register for the same exam again at no charge.

Second Shot is attached to all regular-priced individual technical exams

Second Shot is attached to the following MCSA, MCSE, and MCSD certification exam packs and saves you at least 15 percent off single exam pricing:

• MCSA: Windows Server 2012

• MCSA: Windows Server 2008

• MCSA: SQL Server 2012

• MCSE: Desktop Infrastructure

• MCSE: Server Infrastructure

• MCSE: Private Cloud

• MCSE: Data Platform

• MCSE: Business Intelligence

• MCSE: Communications

• MCSE: Messaging

• MCSE: SharePoint

• Upgrade to MCSE: Windows Server 2012

Ok who has ever watched STAR WARS and wanted a 3D princess Leia Hologram?

Holograms are often thought of as an optical novelty that can produce pretty 3D pictures, but they are capable of doing much more than that. One of my colleagues Dr Dave Brown has been continuing to explore natural user interaction with 3D data on a 2D displays specially using Microsoft Windows 8 devices.

As we know user interaction with a user interface can be in 2 or 3 dimensions. Dave work aims to build an orientation-independent user interface for a holographic display, which would naturally lend itself to the type of display being used.

Example of 3D Holographic Experience created for Windows 8

2D interaction is pervasive with the availability of multi-touch enabled displays, and 3D interaction is becoming more accessible with products such as Microsoft's Kinect for Windows and the Leap Motion controller.

For example, a vertical screen behaves as a "virtual window" onto the world such as in a first-person 3D game. A horizontal screen on the other hand, behaves as a "virtual table" for viewing and manipulating objects, or as a view from a third-person game looking "down" onto the world.

All Windows 8 apps now support both landscape and portrait modes. Dave work has been developed to support both horizontal and vertical modes, and since he uses specify orientation using vectors he can also specify any intermediate angle.

For more details on Dr Dave Brown work see http://drdave.co.uk/page/projects

So if you are working on any interesting 3D project we would love to hear more?

Are you interested in the Cloud for gaming opportunities?

Attend one of these FREE day technical briefings on the Windows Azure Platform, these briefings are  designed to help games companies explore the opportunities presented by Windows Azure as a rich, extensible, scalable, resilient and geo-replicated games platform. The briefings will help games companies understand the Windows Azure Platform and how great games and cloud based applications can exploit this powerful new platform.

April 29, 2013 in Hamburg

April 30, 2013 in Paris

May 1, 2013 in Reading

May 3, 2013 in Amsterdam

Windows Azure Games Acceleration Lab – May 21 & 22, 2013 / Reading

Designed to help create highly-available, highly performing, scalable applications and services to cover a wide range of game scenarios. We are also particularly interested in developers who are keen to exploit any of the following themes:

• Create highly-available, infinitely scalable, multi-tier, highly performing games and services using a rich Platform as a Service environment

• Optimising game performance with machine scale out, extensible caching and CDN

• Develop with a wide range of language and tools

• Create real time and turn based multiplayer game support with SignalR, Windows Azure Service Bus, sockets, etc.

• Analysing post game data and usage through Big Data and Hadoop/HDInsight

• Manage cross device platform devices and social network authentication with Windows Azure Mobile Services

• Stream and managing video with Windows Azure Media Services

“We love Windows 8. The live tiles and the ease of operation makes it a magical operating system to work with…….. We are extremely proud of the Rapid2D engine and want as many developers, both professional and novice, to discover all the benefits of using it.”  David Fletcher, Rapid 2D

This engine was initially developed by Rapid2D in support of the Guinness World Record Gamejam we did back in September last year.   It was created to assist the Game Jam participants to rapidly develop their Windows 8 games within C++/DX.  Since then the Rapid2D team have continued to develop and evolve the game engine to include Windows Phone 8 support and to come bundled with a series of plug-in and game templates.

For those who attend the Windows In Academia event last month and had the opportunity to see Rapid2D in action here is a copy of David’s presentation.

If your interested in Rapid2d simply visit Rapid2.com and check out the interview in this months Develop magazine which talks about the Rapid 2D game engine as they look to launch their Professional licensed version early next week with full support for both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. 

The free version, which is currently available, is primarily aimed at the hobbyist or student so the perfect tool for C++ curricula and getting students looking to develop their programming understanding and capabilities of C++ and Windows 8. 

The licensed Pro version to be launched later this month will look to support more advanced game developers and small indie studios as they look to develop game titles for both Windows platforms. 

Rapid2D is being extensively now used by Train2Game which have over 9,000 game dev students they have enrolled on their courses and a number of gaming Universities in the UK are now utilising the engine to enhance teaching and students ability to create real portfolio's of apps which are available in the Windows 8 Stores. 
Rapid2D also have plans to take the engine Global and build a large community around it to help generate 3^rd party plug-in and gaming templates.  It helps that they have over 40,000 game dev students enrolled on their courses across the World so have a good starting point as they not only look to build that community but also integrate the game engine within their Degree and Masters courses on games development and encourage their students to develop a portfolio of game apps on the Windows platforms which demonstrate their skills to potential employers.

So how is this being used… today there are over 300 game apps in the UK Windows 8 Store!

Additionally Rapid2d recently ran a competition, where they looked for the Rapid 2D engine to be used by UK game dev students in developing and publishing Windows 8 game app titles.  Rapid2d have had over 150 teams enter the competition and utilise the game engine to develop a range of game apps. 

I wanted to put this quick blog together to answer the most common questions I get from students/developers wishing to build apps.

 1. How can I get a Store Account for Windows?

All Students get FREE Windows 8 Store accounts via DreamSpark follow this presentation on the steps to how to validate your FREE Windows 8 Store account

2. What are the resources available if I want to start developing a Windows 8 or Windows Phone application

Windows 8 Developers – http://dev.windows.com

Windows 8 Designers – http://design.windows.com

Windows Phone Developers – http://dev.windowsphone.com

Windows Phone Designers – http://design.windowsphone.com

3. Not a designer, where can I get a logo?

Images from www.thenounproject.com Remember to check licensing first!

4.  I want nice fonts, but aren’t they expensive?

www.Fontsquirrel.com is an excellent resource

5. Where can I get colours to match my app?

www.kuler.adobe.com and www.colorlovers.com are excellent, free, searchable resources

6. Where can I get background/pattern for my app?

Great resource with some nice tutorials www.dinpattern.com

This week I had a really interesting discussion/debate with a University lecturer on teaching user interface design and it took me back just to how things have changed since the mid-nineties.

When I was a student a lot of CS courses which looked at interface design had materials which referenced the following statement “The Evil’s of Rapid Prototyping,”  and many slide decks contained reasons why rapid prototyping was a bad idea. Most of the reasoning centred around prototyping tools being so complex back then, they needed to be operated by developers; subsequently, the design process tended to be influenced by all design work needing to be interpreted through the lens of what a prototyper could actually achieve with the software available.

Fast forward to today and there’s been a rethinking on prototyping. Is this good or bad?     

I recently blogged about how professional organisations are using tools such as OneNote for UI/UX design. Additionally there a lots of new prototyping tools have appeared over the past few years and they’re rapidly being adopted by interaction designers.

So we concluded that the creators of these tools never attended one of these courses!

So the question I now want to pose is.. how do go about teaching modern user interface design and application workflows on your courses and what tools and resources do you use?

As we know prototypes can be as simple or as complex as necessary for the project on which you are working.

For example

• A prototype can be a rough sketch with notes
  
• A linear sequence of slides with a few notes that demonstrates
  
• A workflow drawn on the art board,
  
• A complex graph, outlined in the panel designs and layouts, that includes reusable elements on a single screen (component screens), and navigation between screens (navigation connections).

What tools do you use?

Microsoft SketchFlow includes several tools to make your prototype interactive in order to more closely mimic the flow of a production application. For example, with SketchFlow, you can do the following:

• Begin a prototype with just a site map and a few notes jotted on the application screens, and then continue to refine your prototype as you go along.

• Either draw user interface (UI) elements, or import them from common drawing programs.

• Animate your prototype, creating a visual representation of the interaction between the user and the application.

• Use the full library of standard UI elements and custom controls.

• Create sample data on the fly, easily build data-driven UI, and add styles to your data.

• Create interactivity without writing code by using built-in behaviours. Behaviours are extensible, making it easy to add custom behaviours to your prototyping toolbox.

• Either write code to create custom elements, or use pre-built elements from your development team

Sketchflow Resource

For more details on Sketchflow see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/expression/ee215229.aspx 

Tutorials on Sketchflow see www.microsoft.com/.../creating-navigation.aspx

But what about considering Modern design principles..

With Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 we have the following key principles which need to be adhered

So the key things you need to consider when designing your apps for modern applications are..

Ensure that you weave platform features into your core scenarios and prototype design to leverage the power of the underlying platfom..

So lets think about the platform features available..

To help develop these scenarios here are list of the key resources.

Microsoft Design Guidelines for Windows Phone http://design.windowsphone.com

Microsoft Design Guidelines for Windows 8 http://design.windows.com

Microsoft User Experience Fundamentals and online training http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Windows-Camp/Windows-8-UX-Fundamentals-Training-Workshop-2012

So where to start?

To help you get started on your app development here are some templates and guidance from http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Windows-Camp/Windows-8-UX-Fundamentals-Training-Workshop-2012

Example of a completed template for a new app design/concept.

Conclusion

In summary, using any form of prototype technique makes it easy to sketch out a conceptual application and ensure the following are achieved.

So what are you waiting for? You can just create a series of screens and use the templates above and then begin to draw. As your idea progresses, you can add interactive elements that make your prototype as close to the finished product as you need it to be to communicate the design idea you want to convey.

Reviewers can use the tools such as SketchFlow, One Note  to view the application flow, and then leave feedback directly in the project as annotations. Once the feedback has been incorporated and the prototype is complete, the prototype project can be handed off to a developer for conversion into a final application,

Microsoft Dynamics Academic Alliance team have opened for registration the Summer 2013 Microsoft Dynamics AX Curriculum Training Conference.

What is Microsoft Dynamics Academic Alliance?

Interested in Microsoft Dynamics within your curriculum then register for the following event 

Microsoft Dynamics Academic Alliance will offer free training related to the new Microsoft Dynamics AX curriculum being offered to DynAA members. When taught in its entirety, the curriculum prepares students to take the Microsoft Dynamics AX Financials and the Microsoft Dynamics AX Trade and Logistics certification exams. The modules within the curriculum can also be used individually to enhance existing curriculum. Instructor Guides will be provided.

Please register here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/5819469189

When: August 19-21, 2013
Where: Microsoft Campus-Munich, Germany
Konrad-Zuse-Str. 1
85716 Unterschleißheim, Germany  

Learn how to use this curriculum in your classroom either to enhance your current curriculum or to prepare your students for certification.

The training class and all materials needed for the training, including computers, will be provided by DynAA at no charge. Meals will be provided during the training at no charge. Travel to Munich, Germany, as well as hotel expenses are at the cost of the attendee. Those attending from a Public Sector institution will be required to provide a signed Pre-Approval letter.  

Please contact Microsoft Dynamics Academic Alliance, Senior Program Manager,  Jane Birkegaard Thomsen at v-janet@microsoft.com or dynaa@microsoft.com

Today is an exciting day for Microsoft, Windows Azure, today marked the general availability of Windows Azure Infrastructure Services. This new service now makes it possible for all customers to move applications into the cloud. The announcement today are not only about Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or Platform as a Service (PaaS), it’s about Infrastructure Services and Platform Services and hybrid scenarios.  The cloud should be an enabler for innovation, and an extension of your organisation’s IT fabric. for more details of today announcement see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2013/04/16/the-power-of-and.aspx

Scalable, On-demand Infrastructure for Your Apps

Dramatically reduce your wait time to provision IT resources by rolling out apps and infrastructure in minutes. Bring your Windows or Linux-based application to the cloud as-is. Scale up or scale down as needed for a wide range of app hosting scenarios and pay only for what you use.

Extend and Synch.  Connect Hybrid Infrastructure Services with a Single Identity

Build hybrid services that take advantage of what you already have while enabling new innovation in the cloud. Bring your existing identities to apps running in Virtual Machines by simply connecting to your on-premises Active Directory. Running Office 365? Simply run Active Directory Federation services in Virtual Machines to sync with on-premises identities for single sign on.

Build. Learn. Test. Rapid Innovation Using Infrastructure Services for Dev & Test

Spin up a test lab within minutes. Connect to your existing infrastructure if required. When you’re done, tear it down, bring your app back in house to run it using your on-premises infrastructure, or keep it in the cloud. The choice is yours.

Customize. Collaborate. Maintain. SharePoint on Windows Azure Infrastructure Services.

Spin up SharePoint farms in minutes without major capital investments. Integrate full trust code to run rich apps and business logic, and provide internet facing collaboration sites on SharePoint that scale with your business needs.

Develop. Scale. Unlock. Robust Infrastructure for SQL Server

Start small, go big. Whether you are building a lab to prototype your newest app with SQL Server or extending data marts into the cloud, Windows Azure Virtual Machines is a solid foundation you can count on. With full SQL Server compatibility you get capabilities like full-text search, or transparent data encryption for greater security.

This is a great infographic from http://www.dotnetsolutions.co.uk/

Teaching/Learning and Research Opportunity

If your interested in testing or teaching Azure Cloud services see http://www.windowsazure.com/education

Tech.Days online is back and this time it’s bigger and better than ever before.

So if your interested in learning about Microsoft latest technology and tools and hearing from experts then you need to book out the the 24th, 25th and 26th April for three, free days of interactive learning; online and direct from your browser.

Learn all about the latest Microsoft Technologies and with even more exciting topics, discussion and interactivity.

Learn online from the comfort of your own desk
Register once and dip in and out of the sessions you want to attend
Half an hour, bite size sessions on the topics you most want to hear about
Dedicated sessions for IT Professionals and Developers
Ask the experts questions throughout the three days
50 free MVA points for anyone that attends
Plus the opportunity to win loads of cool prizes!

Interested? Register for this event for FREE

For a chance to win a HTC Windows Phone 8, all you need to do is follow @TechNetUK and tweet the following: Tech.Days Online is back!! http://aka.ms/k35pwq RT & follow @TechNetUK for a chance to win a Windows Phone 8 #UKTechDays2013

By registering for Tech.Days Online 2013, you will also be automatically entered into a prize draw to win a Sony VAIO laptop (Terms and Conditions apply)

Day One, Wednesday 24th April

Dedicated to developers and testers, learn more about Visual Studio 2012 ‘the tool for developing for Windows 8’.

09.20 Introduction to Tech Days Online 
09.35 Developing in Visual Studio, what's changed in the last 12 months?
10.35 Coffee Break
10.45 Developing for Windows 8 with Visual Studio 2012
11.45 Coffee Break
12.00 Why Visual Studio 2012 is "brilliant" for Javascript Development
12.45 Coffee Break
12.55 Interview with Planky/David Gristwood - Visual Studio Tools with Windows Azure
13.20 Being Agile with Team Foundation Server 2012
14.00 Coffee Break
14.10 TFS for everyone – Using TFS in a heterogeneous project (Eclipse, Java and using Git-tf)
14.45 Coffee Break
14.55 Upgrading to Team Foundation Server 2012
15.30 Coffee Break
15.40 Test Data Management: Don’t fudge it, manage it
16.10 Coffee Break
16.15 “The Thrill of the Hunt” with Exploratory testing in Visual Studio 2012
16.45 Coffee Break
17.00 Interview
17.10 Wrap Up

Day Two, Thursday 25th April

The first of two days solely devoted to IT Professionals, based on the topics that our IT Pro community have voted they want to hear more about.

09.30 Introduction to Tech.Days Online Day 2
09.35 The Windows 8 Gadget Show
10.00 Guest Interview
10.10 VDI Killed the Desktop Star
10.40 Guest Interview
10.50 Coffee Break
11.00 Enabling DirectAccess - Snowmore Disruptions
11.30 Interview with MS IT
11.40 Phone a friend or ask a Licensing Specialist part 1
12.10 Coffee Break
12.20 Ready, Steady, Click - Windows 8 Deployment Live
12.50 Coffee Break
13.00 Windows Server 2012 - Real Life Example
13.10 Hyper-V Replication - Resistance is Futile
13.40 Windows Server for Megalomaniacs who want to manage!
14.10 Coffee Break
14.20 Guest Interview
14.30 Coffee Break
14.40 PowerShell Suits - Beyond the Fundamentals
15.10 Phone a friend or ask a Licensing Specialist part 2
15.40 Windows Server Scale - Having it LARGE!
16.10 Adbreak
16.20 Guest Interview
16.40 Q&A
16.50 Wrap Up

Day Three, Friday 26th April

The final day of Tech.Days Online is solely dedicated to IT Professionals. The agenda has been built by our IT Pro community, based on the topics they most wanted to hear about.

09.30 Introduction to Tech.Days Online Day 3
09.35 Intro to the Cloud OS - Taking the Marketing BS out of the OS
10.00 Coffee Break
10.10 Appy Monitoring with System Center 2012
10.40 Lionbridge cloud running on SC2012 / WS2012
10.50 Coffee Break
11.00 Orchestrate Everything without a Conductor!
11.30 Coffee Break
11.40 The Basics of Windows Azure Networks - The Birth of Skynet
12.10 Coffee Break
12.20 Rise of the Virtual Machines in Windows Azure
12.50 Coffee Break
13.00 The Plankernator - Interview
13.10 Pop up a Pop Up Lab in Windows Azure
13.40 Build a Cyberdyne System Center Lab on Windows Azure
14.10 Coffee Break
14.20 Postman Pat on a Cloudy Day - Exchange on Server 2012
14.40 Relate - Why SQL Server and Windows Server 2012 don't need counselling
15.10 Coffee Break
15.40 SharePoint 2013 - Being more Social
16.10 Coffee Break
16.20 Guest Interview
16.50 Q&A
17.00 Wrap Up

This year we had over 3,000 entries for the UK Imagine Cup Final.

We had 4 Regional Finals, Each of the  regional finals were used narrow down the entries to leave the top 3 winners from each region to attend this years UK Final. The UK finals, took place on April 8th at the University College London. The finals planned to host 12 teams to battle it out to be the UK winner and represent the UK at the World Wide Finals which will be hosted in Russia.

The four regional finals took place at

1. North East (Sunderland Software City, NEBYTES, Black Marble)

2. South (Setsquared, OpenMic, Opposable Games, Exeter IGNITE, Exeter University Guild)

3. London (UCL)

4. Midlands (Birmingham City University)

Projects and Teams

On April 8th, 10 teams competed in the UK finals.

Below is a breakdown of all the teams split into the regions they qualified from. We would like to say a huge thank you to all the teams that came, we were excited to have them compete and we were really impressed with the quality this year.

Region: North East

Praxis (Games) - Praxis were from the University of Teesside, and created their "Lost in Darkness" game.  Team member, Richard Lawrence explains the premise of the game, "We take you back to the 1950’s. You play a woman who is lost in a haunted and eerie mansion in search of her long lost father. You navigate your way around trying to find out the truth of your fathers absence, with only have a lantern to help you guide your way around… But the question is, will you find him before you get lost in the darkness forever?” Other team member Steven Jackson stated "Once we had chosen the horror theme, we wanted to move away from the convention of shooting and zombie games and instead were interested in the prospect of exploration and playing about with the user’s senses, we really wanted to scare anyone who played." A few of the judges even ended up jumping whilst playing the game!

Osseus (World Citizenship) – Osseus are a virtual physiotherapy application used to aid patients in their recovery and treatment. They had an innovative solution using the Kinect to track the patient’s movements. This would store the information in a database – the key here being that they could move this into the cloud and process this data for more information to help the patient!

Osseus created a great programme that made exercising at home fun, easy and cheap, and even the judges were having fun trying it out and getting involved!

One of our Judges Andy McCartney trying out Osseus’s Technology!

Region: Midlands

Eye of Moscow (Games) - There seemed to be horror in the air at our UK finals. Eye of Moscow, like Praxis, developed a horror game based on a true Russian story, but this time were trying to aim it at the 14-17 age range. They wanted people of a younger age (with horror games usually rated 18+) to have a great experience whilst also getting scared! The team described a haunting story set in Chernobyl, of a doctor who has turned crazy due to a leak of poisonous substance in an underground hospital. He believes his family are still alive and goes in search of them, but will he discover the truth of their whereabouts and uncover the story?! With creaky doors and disturbing hallucinations of ‘grudge-like’ young girls, even the judges were engrossed by the teams story and were all scared by the end of it!

Squi-Delta (Games) – A team of two from Birmingham came together to create an addictive PC game (hoping to get it on windows phone eventually), that rooted for a lost squids search for his home!

With the innovative and shall we say ‘interesting’ choice of lead character, everyone playing the game was cheering for ‘squi-delta’ to find his way back, dodging grusome sharks and mines, but not before he stopped to pick up some goodies on the way!

Region: South

11th Hour (Innovation) – “What’s our aim of today? To get to Russia!”

11th Hour were a team from Exeter University who developed a ticket-selling app. The app connects unsold tickets for a wide variety of events to consumers – from ballet lessons to music festivals. The focus is on last-minute events: if a company has not sold out their class or venue within a week or so of their event, they would use the app to advertise their tickets at a discounted rate, in order to ensure the capacity was filled. Companies pay a base rate to be included on the site, which is then raised if they wish to appear in a more prominent position on the app. Users are encouraged to sign up to the site, where they will receive ticket alerts 15 minutes before the general release.

Ticklo (World Citizenship) –Ticklo built an education app for students, teachers and parents. Unlike similar apps, Ticklo produced a fun and easy way to learn and engage young kids at school without leaving anyone behind. The app allows teachers to set assignments for their classes- currently with a focus on mathematics - which students can access at school and at home using Azure technology. The app tracks each student’s progress, including how long it has taking pupils to answer each question, which the teacher can use to build lesson plans and highlights subject areas that require further attention. The app is also intelligent – if students are answering lots of questions wrong, it will pick up on this and reduce the difficulty of the questions. It is designed with students in mind, and in the hope that one day we can get everyone to the same level, no matter how long it takes!

SoundSYNK (Innovation) – SoundSYNK have developed an app which connects devices together with the same content. They set the scene by describing a music festival: when the band finishes playing, festival-goers retreat to their tents together where one person would play music from their phone to maintain the atmosphere. However, the volume is often not high enough for large groups to appreciate. SoundSYNK uses Bluetooth technology to link together an unlimited number of mobile phones and stream the same song in perfect timing, effectively creating a symphony of speakers. This can also be used in the corporate world, where meeting leaders will be able to distribute certain documents, such as PowerPoint presentations, out to the attendees so everyone is able to personally view it. 

Region: London

Oxi-Way (Innovation) –  “This has been an amazing experience. Today I feel especially nervous and excited. I’m really looking forward to see the other competitors” - Riham

Oxiway are a team from Oxford University, who have created a swapping and trading site for students... Think Ebay but better! It’s free to use when you log in with your university email address, and allows members to buy, sell and swap items as required. Local retailers are also able to join the site, with students being able to reserve products online and collect them in store, preventing the need for online payments. The Oxiway team attended both the Oxford and Imperial University careers fairs, where they received 600 sign-ups In 3 days.

Networked Vehicles (Innovation)- This team of 3, used Microsoft Gadgeteer to create a service fit in vehicles that allowed drivers to find out more about their driving and other drivers on the road.

They also were testing out the concept of projecting key information onto a drivers windscreen and side mirrors!

VirtUlearn (Innovation)-  Like Ticklo, this London-based team, sought to create an Education app that helped out teachers in the classroom, create a more virtual and fun environment for their students.

Incorporating Kinect technology and Touch screens, it was aiming to try and take the mundane classroom lessons we have into a new era of learning! 

Our Judges

We were lucky enough to have some great judges with us on the day

Andy McCartney- UK Breadth Technical Evangelism Manager

Phil Cross- Audience Marketing Manager

Anand Krishnan- UK Senior Director DPE

Natasha Joseph – UK Imagine Cup Organiser

Jennifer Ritzinger – We were so lucky to have had Jennifer come all the way from Corp and help us with the judging.

She couldn't conceal her passion for the competition, stating that "It is very authentic and genuine for us. It is part of our blood". This, she states, is why Microsoft have continued to invest in the competition every year.

Guest Speakers

Calum Cawley- We were privileged to have Calum Cawley join us, who was one of the winners of the Imagine Cup back in 2010. It was great to get his insight into the process of the Imagine cup, his experience of the finals and winning, his ‘key learning's’, and what is next for him now!

Alistair Shepherd- We tried to pull off a stunt at the UK finals, and were lucky enough to have Alistair who with his partner Sam Mead, owns a start-up called Saberr who specialise in Intelligent recruitment, and help people try and form the ‘Perfect Teams’. We asked all the student teams to fill out their specially designed questionnaire, and using this information with their algorithm, that Alistair would be able to predict:

A) who will be the Top 3 teams

B) Which team would Win!

Let’s just say somehow he managed to get this 100% correct!!

The UK TOP 3

3rd Place: Games Competition Winner- Praxis

2nd Place: World Citizenship Competition Winner: Ticklo

And drum roll… the overall winners are….!!!!

1st Place: Innovation Competition Winner - SoundSYNK

We wish the guys at SoundSYNK the very best of luck at the World Wide Finals in Russia and have no doubt that they will do us proud!

Thanks

I would like to thank all of those who helped out in any of the processes that led to the success that was the Imagine Cup Finals in the UK, it really couldn’t have been a better day without them!

University College London for being such a great host

- Dean Mohamedally

- Stephen Marchant

Regional hosts

- Karen Brooks & Team

- Tracy Costello

- Andrew Westgarth & Team

- Andrew Wilson & Team

Judges

- Jennifer Ritzinger

- Anand Krishnan

- Andy McCartney

- Phil Cross

- Natasha Joseph