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Cairo Microsoft Innovation Center (CMIC) 

CMIC Internship 2008

Are you an Undergraduate student in Computer Science or Computer Engineering or a related field? Do you have ideas on how technology can tackle some of the everyday problems facing the Middle East and Africa? Do you have the passion and ability to see your ideas come to fruition? Cairo Microsoft Innovation Center (CMIC) invites you to apply for our summer 2008 Internship Program.

Table of contents

  1. Who is a qualified candidate?


  2. How to Apply:

    2.1 Application Requirements:

    2.2 Problem Statements:

    2.3 Timeline:

    2.4 Resume/CV guidelines:

         2.4.1 Evaluation Criteria:

         2.4.2 Proposal Guidelines



  3. Where to Apply

    If you are experiencing problems in submission; kindly send you CVs and Proposals to our mail cmiccont@microsoft.com


Who is a qualified candidate?

  • Someone who is in a 4+ year degree program in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field
  • Someone who has a strong ability and passion to write code
  • Someone who is self-driven, passionate about technology and desiring to make an impact on the Middle East and Africa region
  • Someone with excellent written and verbal communication skills in English

How to Apply:

You are to apply as a group of 2-4 people and propose a solution for one of the listed problem statements. Your proposal must involve the creation and use of a Software Application or Service. Your proposal will be evaluated against other proposals and the winning proposal will be awarded a summer internship (subject to extension) at the Cairo Microsoft Innovation Center (CMIC). Your internship assignment will be to implement your proposal.

Application Requirements:

  • Team of 2-4 year College students
  • Submit 3-5 page proposal + CV for each team member

Problem Statements:

Please select only one of the following problems to write a proposal on. Please mention the problem number at the top of your proposal.

Problem 1 Virtually every coffee shop in our region now has:
  • free wifi
  • 1 or 2 LCD screens
  • 5-10 people with laptops
  • 20-30 people with mobile phones
Propose a software service which gets the coffee shop patrons to socially interact. Try to leverage any or all of the above.
Problem 2

Traffic is a major problem in Cairo as well all major cities in our region. People all over are armed with mobile phones usually with cameras and the capability to connect to the Internet.

Can you think of a web service that one mobile user can use while driving to check on the traffic situation at some location at a specific time point? Can this service use data entered from other drivers?

Problem 3

A typical college course outline contains the following as the course material;

  • Course slides
  • Reference books (with an electronic version)
  • Online papers and articles of interest to the course

Usually by the end of the course the student doesn't really know what was actually covered in the course out of each source.

Can you propose a software solution that would help students get 1 comprehensive course material out of the multiple sources stated in a course outline?

Problem 4

One of the many shortfalls in overburdened emerging market healthcare systems is effective post-treatment follow-up. Given the pervasiveness of mobile phones in the Middle East and Africa, how could these be leveraged to facilitate the provision and/or improve the quality of healthcare?

Propose a software service for the collection and dissemination of post-treatment patient information

Problem 5

Many pharmacies are now equipped with PCs connected to the internet and run software which monitors the medicines sold. Many hospitals store their patients' records on PCs which are also connected to the internet.

Suggest a software service to improve what is called “preventive medicine”. Preventive medicine is the part for medicine which avoids diseases instead of curing it; mainly by alerting people who have higher possibilities to have specific diseases based on their age, sex, living area, working area, etc.

Problem 6

A typical TV broadcast authority or station has a huge archive section storing hundreds of thousands of broadcast hours from the past. These include movies, programs, sitcoms, news programs, etc. TV stations typically only reuse a small fraction of the archive and the rest simply sits there collecting dust.

Given that broadband penetration is finally gathering pace in our region, can you think of a software service to allow stations to make better use of their archived multimedia content over the internet?

Timeline:

Application Deadline March 31, 2008
Internship winner decision April 30, 2008
Internship starts 1st week of July 2008
Internship ends Last week of August 2008

Resume/CV guidelines:

Please include the following when applying:
  • Clearly state your graduation date, degree, major, and University
  • Specify your technical skills (including programming languages and other development tools you are strong in), project details (both within university and at any jobs or internships you have held) and technologies you have used on those projects
  • Please reference any additional projects you've taken part in clarifying your role in the projects that you worked on, and what you achieved
  • Provide an active email address, physical address, and current phone number to best reach you

Evaluation Criteria:

Selection criteria is based on both the idea and the team members
  1. Proposal
    • Originality: Is it something new?
    • Value & Applicability: Is it worth doing?
    • Specificity: Does it get into the details of what will be done and how? Is it clear what's in/out of scope?
    • Feasibility: Is it doable in one summer?

  2. Team members
    • Qualifications: Prior experience/project work, Grades
    • Communication Skills: Ability to communicate your idea/plans
    • Problem Understanding: Grasping what it takes to implement what you propose

Proposal Guidelines

  • Do pick your team mates with great care
  • Do pick a problem statement that interests you
  • Don't worry about how your proposal will make money
  • Do worry about how your solution adds value
  • Do brainstorm several solutions before picking one
  • Do research what else is done similar to your idea
  • Don't panic if you find someone else doing something similar to you
  • Do state what approach you will take and what technologies you will use
  • Don't pick a problem you don't know how to solve
  • Do scope your idea until you know what you will/won't do
  • Do fuss over User Experience

 

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