The Imagine Cup competition is getting bigger and better. Over 250 000 students entered the 2008 Imagine Cup competition, making it one of the biggest student competitions in the world. Imagine Cup 2009 will offer students more categories to compete in, a bigger prize pool and the chance to travel to Egypt for an all expenses paid finals!
Robotics enthusiasts get excited as the 2009 Imagine Cup competition includes Robotics into its invitational line-up. Mashup is another new category being introduced in Imagine Cup 09,"This competition challenges students to mash together elements - music, data, visuals, services and anything else they can think of - and rearrange them into something that dramatically changes how people look at a tough issue."
The theme for Imagine cup 09 is aligned with the UN's Millennium goals, which aim to address global issues including poverty, education, health, the environment and more. The theme will be used in the Imagine Cup competition for the next 3 years. This is a long term vision by the Imagine Cup organisers, allowing students to improve on their projects/development each year and advance further in their competition.
For more information, including registrations, go to www.imaginecup.com
Team SOAK (Smart Operational Agriculture Kit) from Australia have been announced as the winners of the 2008 Imagine Cup!!! This is simply an amazing achievement, SOAK members Long Zheng, David Burela, Ed Hooper and Dimaz Pramudya have all come together from different Universities across Australia to create and complete their fantastic project, SOAK .
Over 220 000 students from around world entered this years Imagine Cup competition, 110 000 Students entered the Software Design invitational, from that 500 students were chosen to represent their country in the world finals here in Paris and Australia's team SOAK continued their amazing success and have been crowned the winners of the 2008 Imagine Cup.
Team SOAK have also been announced as the winners of the BT Innovation Accelerator award. SOAK will have the opportunity to work closely with BT and various business consultancies groups to commercialise their invention. Once their business proposal for SOAK is complete, they will have the opportunity to present their proposal in America to a group of potential investors.
Registrations are now open for the 2009 Imagine Cup Competition, register now and be a part of the journey to Egypt.
WOW, watch team SOAK's reaction as they are named the winners of the Imagine Cup 2008. If the video is not working, please click here to watch video!
Check out Team SOAK's winning presentation at the world finals. This is the presentation that won the competition. Must see! approximately 18 minutes. If the video below is not working, please click here to watch video!
Stay tuned to MSOZACADEMIC for a full interview with team SOAK straight after their finals win! Team SOAK explains their winning solution.
After making it to the top 6 in Software Design, SOAK presented their amazing project at world the finals last night. Their presentation went for 20 minutes followed by 5 minutes of Q&A which the team handled superbly. Overall their presentation was flawless, the boys really stepped it up a notch and gave the audience an amazing show.
Check out their presentation for yourself. The video below runs for 90 seconds. The full presentation video (18min) will be posted here in 24 hours along with the results of the finals. Can Australia take home the Imagine Cup? Stay tuned....
Team SOAK have advanced to the top 6 in the Software Design category at the world finals, this is an amazing result! After presenting 3 times in the last two days, team SOAK has been chosen out of 70+ Software Design finalists teams from around the world. Team SOAK along with Slovakia, Brazil, China, Hungry and Portugal will compete in the Software Design finals tomorrow evening. The finals will be held at the famous Louvre Museum in Paris, each team will present their projects in front of a packed house, with over 1500 attendees, the atmosphere will be intense.
The video below was recorded today when Joe Wilson announced the Software Design Finalists. It was in no particular order and Australia was the 6th and last team to be announced. Check out Team SOAK's reaction when they hear their name called.
-Opening Ceremony @ Paris town Hall
-Round 1 presentations, Team SOAK presenting to 4 Judges
-Software and Embedded Design finalists
Microsoft Student Partner (MSP) Steven George recently submitted his entry into the Demo's Happen Here competition. Steven Chose a simple but interesting topic (Vodka O.J), combined with a clear and insightful demo on Visual Studio, and a very cool Facebook application as his entry into the Demo's Happen Here competition. Steve is now in the running for an all expenses paid trip to Tech Ed 2009 in L.A. Click here to check out Steven's Demo!
We have a winner! The Australian Imagine Cup Software Design finals were successfully held @ Remix Melbourne last week. The theme for this years Imagine Cup competition is "Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment" and each finalist team really step-up to this challenge, creating cool and practical software solutions that help address this global issue.
The winners of this years Australian Imagine Cup competition are OZDREAM TEAM with their winning project SOAK (Smart Operational Agricultural Kit). Each member of OzDream Team is from a different University, making the challenge even harder. Team members Ed Hooper, Long Zheng, Dimaz Pramudya and David Brulea have created a smart and efficient water management system for farmers.
-from left: Dimaz, Ed, David and Long- winners of the 2008 Australian Imagine Cup Finals
The SOAK system is designed for drought stricken farmers who have limited water supplies and need an effective water management solution. The SOAK system utilises sensors to enable field and resource monitoring of water levels. The sensors help determine moisture levels, rainfall, wind, dam depth, temperature and water flow. This information is collected and processed through the SOAK application, taking into consideration, weather forecasts and crop lifecycles to create a highly efficient water management system. For example, the system will not water if rain is predicted however, if rain prediction is small or inaccurate the system will react by compensating. All these functions can be monitored and performed from a computer or PDA.
The information is presented through a rich user interface experience, using Silverlight, combining Virtual Earth maps and Windows gadgets
-using Virtual Earth to highlight areas of activity
The SOAK application has received endorsement from a variety of industry groups such as the Victorian Farmers Federation, government ministers and business leaders.
-OzDream Team presenting their project SOAK at the finals
As the winners of the Australian Imagine Cup finals, OzDream team will travel to France to represent Australia in the Imagine Cup World Finals on the 3rd of July. Check out this cool video of what OzDream Team will get up to in France. http://channel8.msdn.com/Posts/Imagine-Cup-2008-France-here-we-go
Stay tuned to MSOZACADEMIC for updates on OZDREAM Team and their results in the world finals. I will be posting a Video Demonstration on how SOAK works next week.
This years Imagine Cup was extremely competitive, with all teams submitting some amazing projects.
2nd place Team E-Green: The aim of the eGreen system is to give consumers information about the environmental impact of the products they buy, taking into consideration the entire supply and demand chain. Check out the Video demo here!
3rd place Team iWater: The iWater project is a smart water saving system that uses intelligent water filters to determine the level of water consumption in each individual area of the house, allowing the user to monitor water consumption and make water saving projections. Check out the video demo here!
4th Place Team Green Revolution: The Green revolution system has designed a smart and easy to use method of accessing public transport information, encouraging individuals to use public transport and help cut down CO2 emissions by each commuter. The system has been implemented to run on PDAs and Smart Phones. Check out the Video demo here!
-iWater, presenting their project
-eGreen Presenting their project
-Karo
Are you worthy of the title Australian Demo God 2008?
Do you have what it takes to demonstrate complex technical techniques simply, efficiently, enthusiastically?
Do you want to be celebrated for your technical prowess at TechEd08 in Sydney later this year?
Are you confident enough to win an all expenses paid trip to TechEd09 in Los Angeles?
Then you may be just the person we're looking for:
From thre 1st of April until the 31st of July, we're running the Demo's Happen {Here} Competition as part of the Heroes Happens {Community} Launch.
Full terms and conditions are available upon request, simply email OzHero08 or download them from the Community Tab on the Australian Heroes Happens {2008} Website.
Entry details below:
- Demonstrate one (or more) of the Launch Technologies: i.e. Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 in your Community Group
- Video this demonstration using a web cam, Live Meeting, a video camera, or a screen capturing utility (e.g. Camtasia)
- Upload your video to http://silverlight.live.com
- Register your demonstration, with a link to the uploaded video at the Heroes Happens {2008} Website
- Check out all your competition, not to mention the cool videos of other demos (for inspiration) at the Heroes Happens {2008} website
You have two ways of getting to the State Finals:
- Your Community Group can nominate you as the best demo god of the group, and your leader will register you as the entrant.
- For Community Groups that haven't submitted enough demos (at least 3 from at least 2 different entrants) or because we just think you're that great, Microsoft judges will nominate up to 30 wild card entries to the State Finals
Besides great prizes for being nominated, the winners of the State Finals get all expenses trips to Sydney to participate in the National Finals at TechEd08.
This Grand Final will take place in front of the audience at TechEd08, and the national winner will be crowned Australian Demo God 2008. Their prize includes an all expenses paid trip to TechEd09 in Los Angeles next year.
Other prizes include: Bluetooth USB Presenter Mice, Media Centre Extenders with DVD Players, Subscriptions to MSDN etc.
What is my Community Group?
Simply put any IT Usergroup, University Computer Club, Corporate Internal Community of Practice, lunchtime meeting at a MCT training centre, Special Interest Group of the ACS, or any group where like minded geeks meet to boast
Where can I get content to demonstrate, like Virtual Machines, software etc?
Speak to your Community Group Leader. We have distributed over two hundred 80GB USB HDD's packed with content for them to share with you.
Is the quality of the video important?
Nope, a webcam or even mobile phone video will do just fine. We're looking for quality of demonstration, not video. State nominees will be demonstrating to a live audience at the State Finals.
Can I enter more than once?
Yes, but not with the same demo.
What about other technologies? Other than Microsoft even?
Absolutely!! As long as your demo contains just one of the launch technologies, you're eligible. You're welcome to demonstrate multiple launch technologies in the same demo, or integrate with other Microsoft technologies (e.g. Windows Mobile, or Sharepoint Portal Server) or even better show us how you can get PHP running on IIS7 or Linux machines connecting via NAP into Active Directory.
Remember, keep it short, keep it compelling, but don't limit yourself.
How will my demo be judged?
We really want this to be a community based event. So each group is free to judge demo's at their discretion. However, we do have judging criteria which will be used for all wildcard entries, as well as at the State and National Finals.
Anyone can get a copy of these criteria by emailing OzHero08. We recommend that Community Groups use these to help them judge the best demo objectively.
Where can I get help?
Speak to your Community Group leaders, email OzHero08, speak to your local Microsoft Evangelist, or if all else fails, email me directly. We've loads of resources, and people who are more than happy to work with you to get a demo up and successful.
When can I start?
Now!
However, please note that the Competition Guidelines, Terms and Conditions, and registration website will be going live over the week-end. Still, if you have a video of you demoing a launch technology, that's less than 10 mins, then get it uploaded to http://silverlight.live.com in the meantime.
The only thing left to ask is if you have what it takes? Are you the Australian Demo God of 2008?
Recently 3 Microsoft Student Partners (www.student-partners.com) from Queensland's University of Technology successfully executed a student event on campus. Within a few weeks, QUT MSPs Arnold, Andrew and Griffith, conducted research for the event, designed invitations, and promoted all over campus. With over 200 students attending the event, the QUT MSPs did a fantastic job hosting.
The objective of the event was to offer students on campus current Microsoft promotions such as, 'Its not cheating' Office Ultimate (www.itsnotcheating.com.au), discuss the Imagine Cup competition (www.imaginecup.com), shed light on upcoming Microsoft student initiatives such as DreamSpark and finally, it wouldn't be a Microsoft event without plenty of freebies.
Pictures from the event
Students enjoying the event
![clip_image001[10]](http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/msozacademic/WindowsLiveWriter/QUTMSPsattractmassivenumberstostudenteve_81C4/clip_image001%5B10%5D_thumb.jpg)
![clip_image001[16]](http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/msozacademic/WindowsLiveWriter/QUTMSPsattractmassivenumberstostudenteve_81C4/clip_image001%5B16%5D_thumb.jpg)
Above: Presenting Vista ultimate as a prize
![clip_image001[12]](http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/msozacademic/WindowsLiveWriter/QUTMSPsattractmassivenumberstostudenteve_81C4/clip_image001%5B12%5D_thumb.jpg)
Above and below: The guys used the Mouse and Cheese costumes to promote the event
Well Done guys!
-Karo
Businesses are actively targeting students through career days, intense advertising campaigns and student days to attract the best and brightest graduates. The ICT industry is feeling the effects of a sharp decline in I.T enrolments, which followed the industry downturn in 2001. Business such as IBM and Microsoft are battling for talent in a shrinking pool.
In a special report by The Australian Newspaper on Tuesday, the article went on highlighted the ever growing demand by businesses for talented graduates and the wonderful ICT job market that graduates were welcomed with upon completion of their respective courses.
I had my 5 minutes of fame, when interviewed by The Australian Newspaper (http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23462224-5013045,00.html) in regards to the intern program that I am currently undertaking at Microsoft. They were very interested to learn that students with a non-ICT background can still pursue a successful career in the industry.
The overall messages are very positive for ICT students; you can expect to have multiple job options as you plan your career path in the Industry.
Microsoft's MACH program is currently recruiting university graduates to join the program. The information is listed below.
MACH Sales Academy now recruiting!!!
The Microsoft Academy for University Hires (MACH) Sales Academy is a two year program designed to take passionate graduates and set them on an accelerated career path in Enterprise and Partner Group (EPG), Public Sector or Small and Mid-Market Solutions and Partners Group (SMS&P). Ideal candidates will have exceptional communication skills and a passion for sales, high level of academic achievement, 0-2 year’s post-graduation sales experience and the desire to succeed. Positions are available in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane and applications close 14 April. For further information please submit your questions to gr8hire@microsoft.com
Keep your eyes open for further information on this blog regarding Microsoft intern positions being offered throughout the year!
-Karo
I recently came into contact with Prachaya Phaisanwiphatpong (a member of the 2007 Imagine Cup World finals winning team from Thailand) via this blog for a chat. After emailing back and forth a bit, 'Badd' (his nickname) agreed to answer a few questions about his experiences at the world finals.
I remember watching his team's final presentation of 'Live Book' (their Imagine Cup entry) at the finals in Korea. It was very impressive in it's sheer simplicity - whilst there were more technically complex entries in the Imagine Cup World Finals, Live Book is an excellent example of a single problem solved thoroughly and expertly. Using a slick, highly intuitive user interface, Live Book quite simply helps people learn to read. The program allows users to scan or photograph books / documents, and then uses OCR to pull pictures of keywords in the scanned text from the web to give the user hints as to what the words are and to make the text more interesting.
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The team with their trophies at the 2007 world finals in Korea. |
If you're interested in the Imagine Cup, or are entering this year, read on and see how Prachaya Phaisanwiphatpong feels about his Imagine Cup journey last year and his feelings on the BT Innovation Accelerator.
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N: Congratulations on the IC2007 world finals win. I was impressed with your entry, particularly the rich user experience. For those who haven't yet seen it, give us an overview of what your entry does and what technologies were used.
P: Live Book is a project which will turn any textbooks into graphical and attractive one by capture real-time frame from a web camera. Imagine this, when young children cannot read textbook, they put that book in front of the web camera. Live Book software will detect and recognize the word on the book. If there's a word 'apple', there will be images and videos of apple floating over the word, and Text-to-speech technology will read the word aloud. It aims to motivate and encourage young children to learn more from any textbooks without limitation in their reading skill. Also, it directly helps illiterate people to learn reading. Main technologies we used are our invented fast-and-tremble supported OCR, WPF for doing graphical rendering, and SpeechAPI.
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Screenshot 1 |
N: How was the BT Innovation Accelerator program? What sort of things do they do with you there?
P: Innovation Accelerator program is very a valuable experience for us. We learned business concept, the process to turn prototype into product and participate with many organization. We worked with real business professional, create a business plan and practise business presentation. In the program, we share experiences among six different countries, which each of them has an unique style of work. The lecture consist of both business and technical content. We found a good chance to see real pitch from real entrepreneur asking investment from real Venture Capital in silicon valley and listen to the success entrepreneur from previous ICIA as well.
Visit IC IA blog at : http://www.imaginecupaccelerator.com/ There are notes for many activities that we've done there.
N: Whilst on the topic of entrepreneurial-ism, there's some big success stories coming out of Imagine Cup. The 2007 Australian Finals winning team is about to hand their entry over to non-profit organisation Vision Australia to help blind people learn how to become software developers. What's next for 3KC? Have any big business opportunities opened up since the IC World Finals?
P: There are many contacts in Thailand non-profit organisation, but we didn't decide about it yet. We takes time to learn more and carefully decide to what to do when we graduated in the next few month. (Right now, we are in the last year of undergraduated study)
N: Fair enough. Your team also won a share in US$25,000. What did you spend it all on?
P: Some of us spent for invest in their current IT business. Some invests in stock market. For me, I spent with my extended family business. Yes, we love investment.
N - Having been through the process of preparing an entry for Imagine Cup, list 3 factors that you see as being crucial to success for those who are entering in 2008.
P: I will answer this with the Imagine Cup worldwide final standard. The most important factor is "sharp idea". Every entries in Imagine Cup world final are well developed and their software are well implemented. The crucial point that make each entries different is a benefit that the software will provide. The great software will directly solve the current problem in a practical and innovative way. It make an impact to the world, not just only relate or address current problem and not solve them.
The second factor is "team". If you didn't have a right team, no matter how excellent your idea is, your people will mess it up. Make sure each member has potential in their responsible function and make sure every members in team understand the idea and set goal in the same way. So, you can refine your idea and build the prototype to demonstrate your idea.
The last factor is "communication". We need to make sure that the audience, user and judge panel understand our idea correctly. Make them understand the problem clearly, your innovative way to solve and the impact. It's very important to control the audience, to make them understand everything clearly. So, they will get the accurate information within 10-15 minutes presentation, and will ask only relevant question. These three factors are the most crucial factor for me.
Screenshot 2
N: If you were entering Software Design again in 2008, what sort of world problems would you be trying to solve, given the theme is "Sustainable environment"?
P: Personally, I think it is Global Warming. However, global warming is quite very large problem and there's a lot of specific problem to solve. I will take much time to research for the top three largest portion that cause global warming, and select one of them reasonably.
N: I think you're right - this year, the teams that will do well will be the one's who can take a large, complex and address certain parts of that. You're not going to save the world in one swoop, but together we can make a very good start. Okay, let's wrap it up... finish the following sentences:
i) My favourite technology is... Internet
ii) My favourite website is... Google.com
iii) My dream job is... owning the largest and most successful software business in Thailand
iv) The best thing about winning the IC world finals was... telling the world that Thailand is the best (at least for IC2007)
v) You can tell alot about a person from their workspace. At home, my desk is... very clean
vi) At work / uni, my desk is...clean (But for my laptop desktop, OMG, it's terrible. you don't want to see it!)
vii) If I were entering IC08, the one thing I'd do different is... I would be a mentor instead. (because there's IC rule, they don't allow me to compete in software design anymore. so, I cannot be winner twice)
viii) At the closing party for the Imagine Cup world finals in Korea, I was...very fun in the bar
Thanks for your time, Badd. Please keep us posted as to how you go with your future endeavours.
- Nick
EDIT: 4/3/08 - Entries are still open for the 2008 Software Design, Interoperability and Photography categories of the competition. You can register for these categories at http://imaginecup.com. The final submission date for Software Design in Australia is 2/5/08, so there's still plenty of time to get an entry together.
The Windows Live lineup continues to grow... this time with Skydrive increasing it's storage limit to 5GB. Best thing about it - it's free.
So if you're not a Sharepoint whizz, or you don't have access to VSTS, you can still store and share files with your friends (and the rest of the world) online with Skydrive.
Sign up today at http://skydrive.live.com/
- Nick
Each year in Australia, we run an MSP "Bootcamp", where we bring together new and existing MSPs from all over the country for a 2-day planning session at the start of the academic year. The idea behind being a Microsoft Student Partner is to help build a stronger technical community on campus. The idea, then, behind the MSP Bootcamp, is to workshop activities that each MSP can undertake throughout the year to help them build that community.
2008 marks the first year where we have seen almost the entire country properly represented by MSPs, with the addition of Western Australian and South Australian MSPs. If you're interested to see if there's a Microsoft Student Partner in your university, check out http://student-partners.com/Msp/Search/SearchMspProfiles.aspx. They've got a host of activities planned, so if you're interested in learning more about what they've got planned for your campus, drop them a line.
MSOZACADEMIC's own Karo Esmaili (R) and Phil Vella (L) from Atomic Magazine with some premium product placement.
EDIT: 26/2 - Karo and Phil are actually much better looking than this photo portrays. I can assure you that niether gentleman has one eye bigger than the other as it appears in this photo, nor does Phil have Mr. Ed style teeth.
It was great to meet such a fantastic group of enthusiastic people, and I honestlly think we're going to do a great job at building community on campus in the coming months. My personal highlights of the Bootcamp include:
1 - New Perth MSP Luke Kim's demo of how easy it is to build a kiddie-safe web browser using Visual Studio (takes all of about 5 minutes).
2 - The first annual MSP of the Year award (henceforth 'SPOTY') went to Ed Hooper for his efforts at University of Melbourne. Ed scored an Xbox360 for his efforts. Second place went to QUT MSP Andrew Tan for joining the program mid way through last year and completely surpassing any expectations I had of him. Andrew has already won an Xbox360 this year, so he received a free ticket to the Heroes Happen 2008 event as his prize. Third place went to Sean Costain, who similarly came in half way through the year, and took it upon himself to run a number of demos and events and enter the XNA Games Development category of Imagine Cup.
3 - Meeting some of the new MSPs - it's always good to meet members of the student population, and we've got some amazing talent and personality in the 2008 MSP group.
Ed Hooper is SPOTY for 2007.
If you are interested in learning more about Microsoft Student Partners, or wish to submit an application, check out http://student-partners.com for more.
- Nick
News just in, Microsoft has released DREAM SPARK, a student program designed to offer 'Professional-grade software developer and designer tools' to all students at no charge (http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/feb08/02-18GSDPR.mspx). This is a huge initiative by Microsoft in providing the student community with the best software and developer tools to assist in technical growth and to further help address the I.T skills shortage in Australia. Dream Spark is not available in Australia just yet however; it will be released within the next six months so keep your eyes posted here for the official release date! Very exciting... For a list of all the cool software check out https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/
Bill Gates talks about Free Software, Students, and Technology
By the way, my name is Karo and I have recently partnered with Nick on msozacademic. I will working closely with Nick on various academic initiatives and look forward to meeting you all. If you have any questions please dont hesitate to contact me http://blogs.msdn.com/msozacademic/contact.aspx
Even more reasons to join Imagine Cup... In addition to the recently announced Software Design Interoperability Award, we just launched 2 new awards for Imagine Cup.
The Software Design Windows Live Award: http://imaginecup.com/Competition/WindowsLiveAward.aspx
Award goes to the entry that makes best use oif the Windows Live Platform
Due Date for online submissions: May 15, 2008
Prize Amount: US$10,000
The Interface Design Accessible Technology Award: http://imaginecup.com/Competition/AccessibilityAward.aspx
Award goes to the entry that is judged to best avoid / decrease barriers to access.
Due Date for online submission: May 2, 2008
Prize Amount: US$8,000
Add to these 3 awards the local Aussie prizes for software design, plus the worldwide prizes plus your free software and you can make a killing from entering the Imagine Cup.
The ground swell of interest in XNA Games Studio never ceases to amaze me - it's truly an underground phenomenon! Accordingly, there's never a shortage of materials produced by members of the community teaching you how to do things with XNA. A while back I posted a video of a great presentation that Luke Drumm delivered at UNSW - well, there's a perfect complementer to that video, in the form of Dan Waters's 12 part video tutorials on how to create an Xbox / PC game from scratch using XNA.
Video: 3D XNA From Scratch: 01 Introduction
The series covers everything from opening your first project through to basics in texturing, modelling and controller inputs and finishing up with deployment to Xbox for the real test - how the game actually plays!
Thanks Dan for the resource, and all the other great XNA materials on your blog.
