Imagine Cup has been a much-anticipate and wildly popular event among students around the world. The event, brought together by Microsoft, has long been a way of promoting technological innovation and creativity by the students. The finals of this year’s Imagine Cup have now kickstarted at Sydney, Australia.
Imagine Cup has been organized by Microsoft for the last ten consecutive years. Students hailing from a number of fields including software design, software development and game design tend to take part in this contest and showcase their innovative products and ideas.
The theme of this year’s Imagine Cup is: Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems. Essentially, the solutions presented by the students have to be linked with this theme. The number of teams participating in the Cup this year is 106 from 75 different countries.
According to Microsoft’s corporate vice president, Walid Abu-Hadba, the event was initiated back in 2003 for the sole reason that Microsoft believes students are a very important part of the world and they can play a very significant role in the advancement of technology and its apt use.
According to him, “The Imagine Cup is all about the students. It’s not about Microsoft. It’s not about the technology. I’ve been with Microsoft for 21 years and when I finished college and I was about to start out, the hardest thing as a software developer wasn’t getting an idea about what to create. The hardest thing was your ability to bring that to market, your ability as an entrepreneur to sell your idea.”
Hadba further said, “You don’t have to be in the Silicon Valley to be a successful entrepreneur. We want to give students the opportunity, no matter where they are, whether they’re in Sydney or Indonesia or Africa, we want to give them the opportunity and the platform to succeed and to monetize their thinking.”
The best part of this year’s Imagine Cup is the game design competition. Students will be presenting their games for Xbox/Windows as well as the mobile platform, both of which are categorized separately. Students have to be able to provide an engaging entertainment in their games without compromising on the essential theme of the Imagine Cup.
We will keep you updated as more news come out of Sydney regarding the Imagine Cup.
Image courtesy: Imagine Cup
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