Imagine Cup Finals: 2nd Place!
Posted by Skrud at Sunday, June 17th 2007 at 1:40pm
This has been an incredible week. Starting with landing down on Sunday, and meeting my team for the first time: Jay, Scott and Chris, from varying corners of the U.S. We sat down and fleshed out a project idea for a Virtual Classroom system. The idea is to recreate the classroom experience, add new forms of interaction to it, and extend the reach of world-class professors. People could take courses over the internet, by attending lectures, in real-time, from classrooms around the world. They could interact with the class by asking questions (and eventually, by real-time chat with TAs or other classmates). We had powerpoint slides being synched up from the teacher’s podium to each student client, and we had the ability for whatever the teacher would draw on the slides to be redrawn on each student’s screen. We also had streaming audio of the lecture being send to each student. I’d love to give you guys more detail on the project, so ask me about it over a pint sometime.
The bulk of the week was spent in our hotel room office, coding, testing fixing and coding. We didn’t have time for any fancy development practices or anything formal; we went for the iterative/last-minute model: get stuff working fast. We got a lot of input from our Microsoft mentors: Jaime, Mike and Justin who came by the hotel nearly every day (and got free dinner ;)), helped us organize ideas and practice our presentation. These guys volunteered plenty of their own time to helping us out, and it was much appreciated.
Yesterday was the big presentation day, where we had to show off what we’ve done to a panel of judges, which included Microsoft researchers, with backgrounds in physics, and engineering… It was kind of brutal. The picked apart every presentation to the point where we had no idea whom would win. Obviously, given the limited timeframe, a lot of the projects were in the same relative state of hastily-written code. There was one project that stood out, which was polished and clean, and had a great idea. This was ObjectSpace, which presented a 3D, interactive coding environment that would teach people how to program. We were sure they were going to take first place. Our presentation was pretty good, and we were confident that we’d be in the top 3.
When it came time to present the awards, however, ObjectSpace came in third. At this point my heart was pounding. We knew we were getting something for sure — because they brutally singled out the two teams that didn’t win anything before announcing the winners. And if ObjectSpace came in third, that meant we had a damn good shot at first place, and Korea. Then we called up for second place, or — as it says my trophy — “1st Runner Up”. (I think “2nd place” sounds better). This was more than we could’ve hoped for, and not bad for a weeks’ worth of work. ;)
I’m really glad I got the time to meet up with my friends who’ve moved out here to work at Microsoft, too. I took the time on Tuesday to check out Taphouse Grill with Vivian, and I went over to Nadia’s apartment to play some pool with her, Ahmed, Eric, and their friend Rosh. Vivian came back out to drink and eat sushi with us last night, too. Who knows when I’ll get to see these friends again — hopefully sooner rather than later. I kind of regret not being able to see much of downtown Seattle (we had one afternoon where we went to an arcade/bar and Scott and I defeated House of the Dead 4), but this week has been a blast nonetheless. You can bet I’ll register for Imagine Cup again next year.
And finally, I’d like to give a huge THANK YOU to all the organizers. Especially Stephanie, who had the stressful job of being a temporary Mom to some 24 geeks throughout the entire week. She made sure we got fed, met our mentors, had time to practice, and enjoyed ourselves throughout the week.
That’s it for now — I’ve got a plane to catch. :)
