YOU MAKE IT SMART CAMPAIGN WAS CLOSED ON 30TH JUNE 2009 – THANK YOU FOR ALL PARTICIPANTS! Microsoft`s You Make IT Smart campaign showed Swiss students how to be innovative and creative with computer science in the area of robotics. Important parts of the campaign were various competitions and the chance to win a free robot.

Microsoft Switzerland was giving away up to 200 free LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXTto enable full-time students of Swiss educational institutions under public law to get hands-on experience on embedded development with Microsoft® Robotics Development Studio and robotics hardware (maximum of one robot per person). Additional 100 robots were available to faculty members of Swiss educational institutions. This is how the robots were distributed to the students:

• 141 students completed successfully Robotics Simulation Online Exercise and got LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT as a prize. If you still want to try out the Exercise, please find the tutorial below (please not however that the competition for free robots was closed 30th June 2009).
  

  Online Tutorial (627 KB)

  
  
• 42 students won LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT in Microsoft Switzerland Events for students
  
  
• 2 students won LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT by participating successfully to the Imagine Cup 2009 Robotics & Algorithms competition

Microsoft Robotics Expo Winners Announced
Microsoft Robotics Expo was organized in Holiday Inn Bern on Friday 8th May 2009 parallel to Swiss Imagine`09 Cup Finals. Idea of the Expo was to give students a chance to show what kind of innovative ideas they have been able to realize with their selected hardware and Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio. Read results of the Robotics Expo competition.

Imagine Cup is an annual worldwide student competition with categories ranging from digital arts to software design. As in the Olympics, Imagine Cup finalists compete at the world finals, which were held in 2009 Cairo, Egypt in July 2009. For Imagine Cup 2009, programmers, artists and technologists of 16 years of age or older were invited to submit innovative projects with the topic: "Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today.”

Imagine Cup is not only a global competition. Microsoft Switzerland provided prizes for all Swiss Imagine Cup 2009 competitors and organized the local Imagine Cup 2009 finals in May 2009 in Bern.

Read more about local Imagine Cup activities: www.microsoft.ch/imaginecup

Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance (MSDN AA) is an annual membership program for technical departments in the area of Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Design or a similar field. If your institution is an MSDN AA program member, the MSDN AA subscription provides you access to Microsoft platform, servers and developer tools software. You can download and install the software to your personal computer, please note that the software must be used for educational and research purposes only as defined in the license terms.

Swiss DreamSpark gives you direct access to basic development software titles free of charge. To be able to download software from DreamSpark, you must be studying at an accredited academic organization that is connected with the Swiss Authentication and Authentication Infrastructure from SWITCH.

*Special terms for usage apply