Microsoft Innovation Center Report 2008-2009 vol.3
Future Engineers Gather in Paris, France – Imagine Cup 2008 World Finals
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July 3rd – 8th, 2008, Paris, France
Imagine Cup is a global technology contest for technology students from all over the world. A total of 370 elected students, from 61 countries, chosen from 200,000 nominees from all over the world, came to the world finals in Paris, competing based on the theme of "Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment.”
Japanese students attended the world final to compete in the competitive Software Design division as well as the Algorithm division. For the Software Design division, a Japanese IT venture company served as a mentor and provided support to the team starting from their preparation for Imagine Cup Japan 2008 all the way to the world finals. The elected Japanese students, with the collaboration of their mentor, took part in Imagine Cup 2008 World Finals.
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Technology Contest to Support Technology Students on a Global Scale
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Imagine Cup is a technology competition targeting to foster young talents who will forge the next generation technology by offering them an opportunity to demonstrate their passion, imagination and creativity to the world. Imagine Cup 2008 was the 6th time this event was held, and the competition is now widely known as a world-wide student competition. Each year, teams of students compete in several invitationals based on a provided theme for the year, which addresses current world concerns.
"Last year, 100,000 students from 100 countries participated in this competition," said Jean Phillippe Courtois (President, Microsoft International; Senior Vice President, Microsoft Corporation), "and this year over 200,000 students from over 100 countries and regions all over the world participated. From these participants, we now have the elected 120 teams and a total of 370 students from 61 countries here in the world finals in Paris. Imagine Cup is not only the largest technology contest for students, but also a place to find and support future engineers with good talent to lead the next generation in the IT industry. At Imagine Cup, students can try out their unrevealed potential on a world stage.”
In Imagine Cup 2008, the students competed against each other in 9 divisions: Software Design, Algorithm, Embedded Development, Game Programming, Project Hoshimi, IT Challenge, Photography, Short Film, and Interface Design. The Japanese team entered the Software Design division, the most competitive division, where elected teams from various countries demonstrated their software design and presentations to show their skills and creativity.
“Many of those experienced in past Imagine Cups now work actively in the IT industry,” continued Courtois, “including a chief system administrator at one of the world’s leading banks, an entrepreneur with friends by expanding the system initially developed for Imagine Cup and others who have chosen the academic field to teach the younger students in the IT industry. This is a week in which students with high potentials collaborate, realize and compete with their own ideas. We would like you all to enjoy this valuable week.”
Aiming for the Top of the World with Strong Support from their Mentor
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On April 1st, 2008, Microsoft Co. Ltd., Japan launched the Student Mentoring Program (Japan Innovation Accelerator Program) for students aspiring to become IT engineers. As its first step, one Japanese venture company served as a mentor and provided continuous support to Japan's national student team in the Software Design division from Imagine Cup Japan 2008 to Imagine Cup 2008 World Final.
Team NISLab, consisting of four graduate/university students from Doshisha University's Faculty of Engineering, Department of Information System Design (Tomoaki Matsushita, Shinji Nakajima, Hiroki Kato, Shinya Maeyama) was elected as the Japanese national team for the Software Design division. NISLab made a detailed preparation for the world finals with support from their instructor Takahiro Kosaka (Junior Associate Prof., Faculty of Engineering, Department of Information System Design, Doshisha University) and their mentor company Knowlbo Corporation.
"Since they were elected as Japan’s national team," says Tomoo Saito (President, Knowlbo Corporation), "Team NISLab had more meetings and late night work than ever." For the world finals, they restructured their once-built system and added improvements.
“As a mentor, I advised them to consider the software from a customer’s view point,” commented Saito, “I made comments as a user, and advised them on how to find room for improvement. The members of NISLab had a very good aptitude for judging how to take the various pieces of feedback and incorporate them into their software.”
Team NISLab developed a new understanding of the importance of decision making in software development by entering Imagine Cup 2008. Mentor Saito noted that this competition, designed for fostering free imagination and creativity in order to promote innovation, was a valuable program not only for the students but also for the mentor companies.
Carrying High Expectations, Japanese Students Competed in Two Divisions
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8 Japanese press teams went to Paris for the Imagine Cup 2008 world finals. Besides their news gathering, the reporters gave various advice and set high expectations for the students.
The members of team NISLab were the leader Matsushita (also in charge of video), Nakajima (in charge of interface), Kato (in charge of server/device), and English-fluent Maeyama (in charge of presentation). They entered the Software Design division with their global electricity consumption management system ECOGRID ("Eco" stands for ecology, plus "grid" of grid computing). ECOGRID is a system that controls and reduces the electricity consumption of home appliances, which is said to share the majority of global electricity consumption. In addition, it allows sharing of electricity consumption information from each household via a network, aiming to call the consumers' attention to environmental issues.
"We have had some opportunities to demonstrate our studies”, said NISLab member Kato (Doshisha University), “but I’ve never had an opportunity before to fully realize my growth or my intention to grow myself more as much as I have now. I could present our solutions because we received a lot of advice not only from our mentor company but also from many others. We thank Imagine Cup because we could develop our solution by setting the theme and direction, organizing the required elements and issues, and finding troubleshooting methods. We have set a goal to advance to the world finals and win next year.”
Naohiro Takahashi, a student from the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies at Keio University, entered the Algorithm division. The Algorithm division is limited to individual entries and designed to compete efficiently to solve algorithms; the fundamental of all programs. Well-designed programs based on correct algorithms are now deployed in a variety of fields, including human genome analysis, global network routing control and Internet search engines, just to name a few.
15,394 students from 134 countries participated in the Imagine Cup 2008 Algorithm division, and 200 students went on to the second-round competition in which they wrote codes from their homes online. Only the top 6 qualified for the world finals. Takahashi was one of those few who qualified for the world finals and he answered 9 questions in 24 hours.
Great Achievements of Japanese Students: Remarkable Presentation in Software Design and the Third Place Award in the Algorithm division
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60 national teams gathered in Paris for Imagine Cup 2008 Software Design division world finals. In the first round, the students made their presentations twice. The judges examined the consistency between their problem definitions and solutions, how much the technologies were utilized and other factors. Twelve elected teams went on to the second round, and then six qualified for the final round. The final round was held at a special stage at the Louvre Museum with over 500 people in the audience, and the qualified teams gave their presentations and QA sessions.
The world final showed such a high level of competition from the national teams that the four judges found it difficult to decide which team would win.
“The students who qualified for the world finals are all winners," S. Somasegar (Senior Vice President, Developer Division, Microsoft Corporation) said, congratulating the students, “You may know it is no longer a big matter if you can win the awards or not. Your great efforts to participate in Paris are worthy of the title of winners. The level of the students in this Imagine Cup has improved a lot each year, and it was a very difficult and tough process for us to judge the elected students from all over the world for the awards.”
Japan's representative team NISLab polished up their global electric consumption management system ECOGRID as an off-the-shelf solution. Despite the problem that their solution all of sudden stopped functioning on the day of the contest, they switched their strategy to use a prepared video, recorded just in case such a situation arose, to carry on their presentation. They answered the questions from the judges in a timely manner by having a short discussion among themselves, and finished their remarkable presentation.
Although team NISLab had a reputation as being one of the best of Japan's national teams among those from previous competitions, they could not get through the first round. Kosaka (Junior Associate Prof., Faculty of Engineering, Department of Information System Design, Doshisha University), who instructed them from the beginning; however, has no doubt about his students' remarkable growth as developers.
“They were not outstanding students in their class,” said Kosaka, “but after they entered Imagine Cup and advanced to the world finals, they were really into development day and night, and that brightened up our lab. It was really remarkable that ordinary students competed with a number of talented rivals in the world finals. This competition proved that each student has his/her own potential, and that a single opportunity to demonstrate his/her ability would fuel his/her motivation. I really appreciate Microsoft for providing such a great opportunity and also the staff at Knowlbo Corporation for giving valuable mentoring to the students.”
| Imagine Cup 2008 World Finals : Software Design | ||||||
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In the Algorithm division, the Japanese representative Naohiro Takahashi (Keio University) won the 3rd place award. While other competitors started working on the questions from the beginning, Takahashi spent the first two hours reading and trying to understand the questions with a dictionary in hand. He finally won the award despite his linguistic handicap.
During the 24-hour competition, Takahashi solved eight questions out of nine in 13 hours, but he could not solve the last question. He changed his strategy to abandon the unsolved question and optimize the other questions in the remaining hours. It has been three years since Takahashi’s first trial to enter Imagine Cup, which was led by his friend’s entering the competition, and Takahashi finally reached the world-class level.
| Imagine Cup 2008 World Finals: Algorithm | ||||||
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Launch on a new Challenge for Imagine Cup 2009
Having started from Spain (Barcelona), Brazil (San Paulo), Japan (Yokohama), India (Delhi), Korea (Seoul), Imagine Cup 2008 was held in Paris, France. Akinori Yaoka (Academic Evangelist, Academic Evangelism Group, Developer & Platform Evangelism, Microsoft Co. Ltd., Japan) encourages students to join Imagine Cup.
“Japanese students tend to take a step back,” encourages Yaoka, “but we would like them to take a step forward. The world is closer than they think. Imagine Cup is not only a place to try out their skills, but also a great place to promote international cultural exchanges with students from various countries. We encourage students to take adavantage of this opportunity!”
Imagine Cup 2009 will be held in Egypt. With a theme "Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today", it calls for software solutions based on the United Nations’ MDGs (Millennium Development Goals). MDGs suggest eight goals to be achieved by 2015, including eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, prevention of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other disease and the provision of universal primary education, just to name a few. Imagine Cup will have the same theme for three years from 2009 to 2012.
Entries for Imagine Cup 2009 will be accepted from July 8th, 2008. Many Japanese students with new potential will be expected to try their best to compete in the world.
| A Week in Paris | ||||||||||||||||
Japan Student Science Award Winning Students Visited Imagine Cup 2008 The 51st Japan Student Science Award ICT Solution Section winner Atsushi Nakamura (Digital Hollywood University) and ICT Solution Section winner Ryohei Suzuki (Tsukuba University Komaba Senior High School) visited Imagine Cup 2008 as a part of their prize. With their senior escort Michikazu Ichikawa (Teacher, Komaba Junior/Senior High School Attached to University of Tsukuba), the two prize-winning students supported the Japanese representatives.
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