Mark Johnston's Blog : Student

Microsoft Student Technology Day Videos Online - SteveB and more industry/MSFT greats

markjo — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:49:35 GMT

On 1 October 2008, Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer and a host of industry professionals discussed the next generation of computer science innovations with more than 300 students and lecturers from across the UK - the event was the Student Technology Day.

The videos are now all online in glorious Silverlight. And I've embedded the big man here, he was on fire that day:

The videos:

There is embed code on the site for you to put the videos on your blog/site/etc - Student Technology Day

Enjoy!

Imagine Cup, Competitors at the ready....

markjo — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:56:50 GMT

The Imagine Cup 2009 is in full swing. And there is no better year to compete - there has been so much going on in the world of Microsoft technology recently:

The Imagine Cup is one of the best and most fun ways to play with all the technology from .NET to Robotics to Silverlight to whatever you want really!

The competitions are now all open and it is the time for students who have passion, ambition and skill to step up to the plate and compete in the Imagine Cup.

Step 1 - Register for the Imagine Cup

You can win without even doing anything in the UK. We are giving away webcams every week, Starbucks cards and a monthly draw for a Dell Inspiron laptop. That should make competing a bit easier...

Step 2 - Compete

If you are an individual, go for one of the skills challenges - themes and categories

If you have friends who want to compete then it's going to be Software Design to enter in the UK. It is the competition that the UK are guaranteed a place in the worldwide finals, this year in Cairo. It is also one of the most inspiring as you go from problem->idea->solution.

You have until 31st December to get your idea in, then 2 months of fun coding to be eligible for the UK finals around Easter next year - Software Design details

Step 3 - If you need support then ask

Paolo Barone and Ed Dunhill are the guys to speak to - we have a team email which you can use to ask us a question or tell us about your idea/entry - ukacinfo@microsoft.com

And my Inbox is always open for IC related questions - Contact Me

And to see the kinds of things previous competitors do, check out our previous winners page

Imagine Cup UK - The winners story

markjo — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:28:18 GMT

It seems like a lifetime ago that we held the Imagine Cup UK finals in London and over 150 students, partners and press came together to see what the competition was all about and how students were helping to fight climate change.

Ben and Dominic won the Software Design competition, and after competing at the worldwide finals in Paris, and their prize was to travel to Redmond (Microsoft HQ) in Seattle to shadow the Popfly team and work on a project. They took a video camera with them to document their experiences and what an experience it was!

Game and Embedded winners also are working at Rare Game Studios and MPC Data locally in the UK for their prize. Hopefully they will blog their experiences as well.

Expression...nah...its all about MSPaint for designers

markjo — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:10:30 GMT

Looking forward to attending Future of Web Design in London in mid-April. The Academic team will be there in a "Student Zone" inside the MS stand area wanting to talk to designer students about how they use software and if we can help them or their lecturers (like we do so well with the CS crowd)

(Hat to Sean Lyndersay)

Imagine Cup competitors - where are they now? Channel 8 videos online

markjo — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:17:09 GMT

My first two videos on Channel 8 are now online. Yes, I do sound that weird (that's Northern Irish people for you) and talk a lot. But these guys all have done incredibly well out of the Imagine Cup and our student programs and their stories are worth listening to!

Imagine Cup UK - where are they now? Tom and James

Imagine Cup UK - where are they now? Tom Marianczak

Imagine Cup Day on 5th June 2008 - Celebrating the best in UK student talent

markjo — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:49:42 GMT

It's been a busy couple of months for the Imagine Cup and we have a good 200-odd students fighting it out for great prizes and the opportunity to travel to Paris (in style) to compete at the worldwide finals.

And to celebrate the best year for the Imagine Cup in the UK we are going to run an event tentatively called Imagine Cup Day (I'll update with a better name shortly!). It will be an event exclusively for Imagine Cup finalists in various categories to come to London to hear from Microsoft, leading industry speakers on the future of Software and to network with future employers looking for talented students. That's right, you could get a job at this event....

Credit to PSD

We will have several VIPs, employers and our sponsor Windows Live Search there on the day to talk to the students.

Outline agenda looks like:

Keynote presentation on the future of software innovation
Technology sessions
Showcase of Imagine Cup entries
Career networking session
Award ceremony (think the Oscars without the crying luvvies)

And then we throw a party! Got some fun stuff lined up - Guitar Hero III, Universally Challenged (a NxtGen production) and music/food/beer/drinks :-)

I bet you are wondering how to attend this extremely cool event - Well, if you are a talented student competing in the Imagine Cup then expect an invite very shortly. Same goes for our sponors, mentors and the student academics. If you are a London blogger - and want to attend, then we want you there - email me at markjo@microsoft.com and we'll get you a press pass (although these are very limited).

Bill Gates at Stanford on Channel 8

markjo — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:14:26 GMT

The Bill Gates Stanford Speech

Covers DreamSpark, Imagine Cup, Innovation, power of software and students

The Inspiration Tour videos on Channel 8

markjo — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 23:02:00 GMT

I managed to get Ed and Ben into the MS UK recording studio thing before Christmas to record their sessions delivered across the country online for Channel 8. Those videos are now all online.

Ed has the background and here are the videos are for your viewing pleasure:

Microsoft Inspiration Tour; Part 1 – Introduction to new Technology

Microsoft Inspiration Tour; Part 2 – Silverlight

Microsoft Inspiration Tour; Part 3 – Windows Embedded

Microsoft Inspiration Tour; Part 4 – XNA

Conference calls

markjo — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:46:02 GMT

We ran our first student Live Meeting and had 30 of our student partners from around the UK on, and for many of them it was their first experience of a conference call. We had people typing and with their laptop microphones on, phone calls going on in the background, etc. It all reminded me of this great parody video of conference calls:

Enjoy!

Bill's last day at the Office

markjo — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:55:45 GMT

This is too good not to share! It is a spoof video which Bill Gates opened the CES 2008 Keynote with - it has loads of celebrities making appearances and worth a watch

Video: Bill Gates Last Day CES Clip

Almost as funny is that George in the IT Pro team has a photo of Bill on her desk... :)

innerworkings - Train your developers to code (properly)

markjo — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:12:43 GMT

I spent some time talking to Bob and the guys at innerworkings about their product and service - it is a developer training interface which integrates directly with Visual Studio and gives developers (ones that write code for a living rather than students) practice based learning opportunities to hone and improve their skills on building .NET applications.

They are based in Dublin and gave me a demo over LiveMeeting a week or so ago to show what their service does. The product is pretty cool and the fact it embeds itself directly within Visual Studio makes it a natural learning tool that doesn't interrupt a developer's production environment. Here is some blurb from their site on their offering:

Take .NET training that's 100% practice-based

Gain skills by solving problems using key .NET techniques

Work at your own pace in a realistic learning environment

Get feedback as you learn from our code-checking engine

Enjoy smart, engaging, and effective .NET learning

NOW THE GOOD NEWS IF YOU ARE A STUDENT: innerworkings have very kindly offered us 60 FREE test accounts on their training environment to distribute as part of the Imagine Cup Software Design challenge. That means that teams will be able to spend time getting very practical development skills on .NET. This will increase their chances of doing well in the competition but more importantly will help them shine when they come to interview for jobs after university. And I'm hoping that innerworkings will become an industry mentor for a team in this year's competition and pass on their wisdom to a lucky team ;-)

Go check out www.innerworkings.com

Where are they now? Imagine Cup 2004 Winner - Andy Grieves

markjo — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:01:43 GMT

This is the first in a series of videos and email interviews with former competitors in the Imagine Cup here in the UK. A very common question we receive is "What happens to former winners and competitors?" and whether the Imagine Cup has had a positive effect on their lives since. I'm not going to focus just on the winners of the Software Design challenge from the UK but look at competitors generally to see where they are now and whether they had any positive memories from the competition and how it has helped them in their careers.

First up, is Andy Grieves. Andy won the Imagine Cup in 2004 and went onto Brazil to compete against the rest of the world. Here are his own words on the Imagine Cup:

Mark: When did you enter the Imagine Cup?

Andy: I entered the Imagine Cup in 2004.

Mark: What was your idea?

Andy: Our idea was to build a smart, location-aware application that would assist students in their everyday life. The concept came from Mat's second round entry and was initially called ULL(University Lesiure and Lifestyle Manager). We built on this, adding more features and rebranding it into "the juice". This was primarily so that we could use cheesy puns for marketing - "the juice - squeezing the most out of student life" and include features called love juice and love pips. Features included:

- "Juice alerts" - invite friends to social events, including maps/directions and reviews

- "Juice pips" - loyalty points gained by attending such social events which could be used in promotions offered by restaurants/bars (e.g. beer and burger for £2 with 50 juice pips)

- "Love juice" - location-aware dating service to find good personality matches for other juice users nearby

- "Out of juice" - 1 click "take me drunk i'm home [sic]" to request a taxi to come and pick you up from your current location

Mark: Anything fun happen at the worldwide finals?

Andy: Plenty! The competition itself was fun and getting through to the last round and presenting our ideas to a panel of rather important people was rewarding. When we weren't up all night developing our application we enjoyed the occasional Caprioska or Capriahana (both plentiful in alcohol and thirst-quenching and refreshing to boot). There was the odd practical joke here and there (some of which i believe were filmed). Then of course there were the days after the competition actually finished where we got a chance to assume rather touristy personas.

Mark: What did you do after the IC? (job wise)

Andy: After winning the UK finals I was put in touch with a HR body at Rare, which is part of Microsoft Game Studios. I actually did the interviews whilst working on our IC project at TVP and got a job offer the next day! I worked in the Shared Technology Team, developing in a mostly managed-world and working on a number of interesting new projects.

Mark: What is your role?

Andy: My current role is as a Credit Derivatives Developer at an investment bank in London. I've only been here a week but that's the great thing about .NET - it's ubiquitous! I've jumped from video games to investment banking and there is a large overlap in terms of technology being used. .NET is the building blocks for many and varied applications.

Mark: Shipped any products? (Any examples of games you've contributed to)

Andy: Working in Shared Technology we were never working in the front line, being directly responsible for games going to market. However the products I developed are used in a games engine which is currently being used to develop a couple of, as yet, unannounced titles by Rare.

Mark: How do you think the Imagine Cup helped kick start your career?

Andy: Above everything else it gave me exposure. There was media interest and interviews to do which led to a number of approaches from some big companies and ultimately a job offer before I'd really had the chance to sit down and decide what I wanted to do for a career. Also it was my first introduction to the world of .NET which has been the (somewhat solid) foundation of my career path.

Mark: Any advice for current competitors?

Andy: Just to have fun if nothing else!

Like the StudentZine newsletter - take this quick survey

markjo — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 18:52:27 GMT

The StudentZine is a small but perfectly formed newsletter we send out to students across the UK every month telling them all about the latest technology trends and student activities we do on campus.

We want to make it better, both in terms of content and the cosmetic look and feel and if you complete the short survey then we will be able to act on your suggestions.

Take the survey (there is an Xbox 360 Elite - Ts&Cs apply)

If you want to sign up for the newsletter then click here

FreePlay Lounge - the movie!

markjo — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 22:57:09 GMT

Video: Free Play Lounge, GameCity07

Paul Foster recorded the event I mentioned earlier. Looked like a great party!

Xbox 360 + Students + Paul Smith = Freeplay lounge and GamesCity event

markjo — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 18:49:40 GMT

Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend but it looked like a cracking event (pulled together mainly by Claire on our team!). A great event hosted by Nottingham council and Nottingham Trent University.

We hosted a bunch of academics and students at two venues - a Paul Smith cinema and bar called Bluu to show them what's hot about the games industry and the Microsoft developer platform, particularly looking at XNA.

For any students that attended, I hope you signed up to the Imagine Cup and are thinking of entering the Game Development or Project Hoshimi competitions!!

You can see more photos on Andy's Flickr set here. Kudos to the guys at Rare, Ginger and the Xbox team for their support. Also to the Fragdolls who came to the event.

(Now what was my XBL gamertag again so I can play Sithers at Halo 3?!)