Imagine Cup 2010 Ireland Finals

April 29th , marked the 4th year that Ireland has run an Imagine Cup local final event. It was here that we selected our winner to represent Ireland at the World Finals which were held in Warsaw, Poland in July. The final was hosting in DIT in Kevin street where students held an open expo event for the press and public.

It was a great student event where we celebrated the power of student innovation in Ireland targeting technological solutions to the world’s toughest problem. These students are creating real solutions that address today’s most challenging problems. We saw real evidence that the student development community is alive and well.

At the awards ceremony we were joined by the Minister for Trade and Commerce, Billy Kelleher TD, Paul Rellis, General Manager, Microsoft Ireland and Brian Norton, President of DIT who presented the awards. Our winner was ImagiNote from DIT in Kevin Street. ImagiNote is a really beautiful application with wonderful visualisations that makes music come to life showcasing the benefits of music therapy. It can also be used as an educational application where it can turn music notes into numbers to improve mathematically ability. We have high expectations of this team as they prepare for finals in Poland in July.

In second place we had Cloud Hands from DIT, led by Frank Han, a former intern of Microsoft Ireland which was the best project in terms of its great and diverse use of technology, utilising XNA and the Windows 7 speech SDK along with the use of an augmented reality headset, bringing the TAI Chi panda master to life. The Goal of the project is to help reduce stress and anxiety which is leading contributor to cardiovascular disease.

Third place went to S.H.A.U.N (Software Help for Autistic User Needs), a well-researched, well thought out project from the University of Ulster Colerain. The judges were highly impress with this project which has a high viability of been implemented and an extremely useful teaching aid for children with autism. The software is designed to help children with autism at primary school level to develop their communication skills with others. It encourages children with autism to express their emotions and communicate with others in a new and exciting way.

Best Azure Application was SaoL from NUI Maynooth. A wonderfully designed medical records application built in 21 days!! hosted on Azure. SaoL has the potential to change health care for everyone along with highlighting disease outbreaks throughout the world.

Best Poster went to Medinight from IT Sligo who captured through design the simple message of their idea.

I wish to thank all our Judges who helped on the day

Prof. Joe Carthy - Head of School at the Computer Science Faculty, UCD.

Dr. Tahar Kechadi - Head of School Teaching and Learning at the Computer Science Faculty, UCD.

Marian McDonnell - Lecturer in Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology [IADT]

Martha Rotter - Microsoft Developer Evangelist, DPE

Shay Hurley - Senior Program Manager, Windows.

Stephen Taylor - Principal group manager, Office Development

Caroline Phillips - Microsoft, Academic Lead for Western Europe

Evelyn Smith - Corporate Marketing Executive of Enterprise Ireland

Special thanks to Enterprise Ireland for their continued support of the Imagine Cup, this year they provided mentoring to ImagiNote before they travelled to Poland for the World Finals.

World Wide Finals in Poland
After the Irish finals, ImagiNote grew from a team of 2 up to 4 for the finals event in Warsaw. This allowed them to bring in some other expertise to build out their application. Prior to traveling to Poland the team worked closely with Enable Ireland and some special needs schools to validate their solution. Day one in Poland saw students gather in front of the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw to celebrate the official opening of the 2010 finals, marked with the cutting of the Imagine Cup ribbon. Wearing their matching T-shirts, teams excitedly waved their country flags and listened to inspiring speeches from Waldemar Pawlak, former prime minister of Poland, Jacek Murawski, general manager of Microsoft Poland and Jon Perera, Microsoft’s general manager of education strategy. Irelands team ImagiNote hit the ground running with their early marketing campaign, showcasing to students from all around the world and getting their ImagiNote stickers on everything. They got out and spoke to as many people as we could, their energy was electric.

Day two saw them go into round one of the Judging competition. The Software Design competition is incredibly tough where the total amount of teams gets cut very early in the competition from 68 teams to 12. Although we failed to get through to the second round, we came incredibly close, this team has the power to change the world I have no doubt they will. ImagiNote has made a big impact in Poland, they kept their energy up for the whole week, telling their story, telling other nations about our country and showing them how incredible our young software developers are. It has been a truly amazing week. I am hugely inspired by these young student leaders, who are socially aware and passionate that technology will solve the world’s most vexing problems. Well done to ImagiNote, you have done Ireland proud.

The Irish team at the 2010 Imagine Cup in Warsaw - mentor Dr Bryan Duggan, lecturer at DIT; Phillip Kavanagh; Nikola Nevin; Marco Castorina and Jonathan Lynch.

Next year Imagine Cup takes to New York City for the world finals, I hope to see even more Irish students there and hopefully coming home with that elusive first place!

Michael Meagher
Academic Engagement Manager