Imagine Cup Round 3 Finalists

This is me taking to the stage to announce the teams that are going forward to the finals on Tuesday. Fortunately there are no pictures of me nearly falling off the stage at the end.

Anyhoo, the six teams that have made it to the final round are:

• Care Everyone China
• OaSys Jordan
• OneBuzz New Zealand
• SIMPLEX Romania
• Team Hermes Ireland
• Team Note Taker United States

Awesome work folks. Very impressive stuff. Now these teams have got to take their presentations onto the big stage on Tuesday.

Imagine Cup Round 2 Judging

Not a bad place for breakfast.

Imagine that you spent a day doing something which was great fun. And then you got to spend another day doing the same thing, only better. Well, that’s how today is going. Yesterday we judged the Imagine Cup Round One teams, who were excellent. Today we get to do the same thing for Round 2, with the 18 teams that are left. I’ve done my marking and I’ve even had time to stitch together some pictures that I took at breakfast, which is nice. The other judges are still working away at their score sheets, and later today we will be announcing the six teams that will be going forward to the finals on Tuesday.

Imagine Cup 2011 Round 2 Teams

At least the camera seems to be working again now…

Well, that was fun. Six presentations, six teams of passionate and enthusiastic students. Six good ideas well implemented. Now we have to put all the scores together and find the 18 best ones. We also have to assemble 18 feedback reports. And all before the end of the day. And we just about made it.

These are the 18 teams who are moving forward to the next round:

• 2ndSight Slovenia
• Apptenders Croatia
• Care Everyone China
• Celebrio Software Czech Republic
• DashPoint Ukraine
• Infiniti India
• LevelUP Brazil
• Lifeware S.A.C. Chile
• OaSys Jordan
• OneBuzz New Zealand
• OriTeam Russia
• SIMPLEX Romania
• Team 25k Finland
• Team Cyber Knightz Malaysia
• Team Hermes Ireland
• Team Note-Taker United States
• White Light Morocco
• Zippers Slovakia

I was up on the stage reading out the names Lisa pulled from a hat. We do this to set the order for the presentation tomorrow.

I was very aware that as well as making 18 teams very happy I was also making 49 teams a bit sad. We say “you are all winners” a lot at the World Finals. Mainly because it is true. For those that didn’t make the cut I can tell you that the competition was very fierce, with the standard going up again. (as it seems to every year). And you have all gained more from this competition than you know. It really will change your life. When you go for a job, make sure that you tell them about the time you had in New York, and what you built. It will be the making of you. Remember that your Imagine Cup entry is not the only great thing you will do. It is just one of the first.

And a final tip if you didn’t quite make it. Go to the eating area on the 8th floor of the hotel. Grab something nice to eat and drink and find a window seat looking out onto the lights of Times Square. Then say to yourself. “I’m in New York on an all expenses paid trip. Last night I saw Steve Balmer turn up and give a speech just to us. Tomorrow we have a BBQ at Ellis Island. I’ve got nothing to do but play with cool tech, hang out with folks like me and explore New York”. And then tell me again how unfortunate you are….

Imagine Cup 2011 Judging Starts

Turns out I’m wearing Mr. Burns socks today. I hope I don’t start behaving like him during the judging.

Today is the judging for the round one presentations. The judges are all ready and assigned rooms, but first we have to brief the students on how it is all going to work. Which apparently involved me going up on the stage and telling some bad jokes. I think most aspects of my life involve me doing this at some point.

This is the left hand side of the audience. When I tried to take a picture of the other part of the room (which is enormous by the way) for some reason my camera let me down. Sorry about that, and you were definitely the better looking half of the room too….

Each judge has been assigned up to six teams to score and provide feedback to. The presentation sessions each last 20 minutes, with 15 minutes for questions afterwards. We give out the top 18, who are going to progress to the next round, at 10:00 tonight. I hope the camera is working again by then….

Imagine Cup 2011 Opening Ceremony

Today the competition proper got under way. This is Jon Perera getting the competition started.

Steve Balmer, CEO of Microsoft, was in his element surrounded by a bunch of tech-enthusiasts.

At the start of every contest they cut a ribbon in half. I’m not sure why, but it makes for a good picture. Actually, perhaps that’s way. Anyhoo, this is Jeffery D. Sachs, Steve Balmer and Jon Perera doing the business in New York. We start the judging tomorrow. This is going to be great fun.