The Microsoft Imagine Cup has over the past 14 years motivated and inspired student technologists, developers and aspiring entrepreneurs over the years to dream and build original solutions that can change the world. Last week’s World Finals saw 35 student teams from around the globe competing for more than $200,000 in cash and prizes, as well as the top prize of a mentorship session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
In a battle among some of the youngest young minds in student developer community, Romania’s Team ENTy emerged as the 2016 Imagine Cup World Champion with their app ‘ENTy’ for monitoring balance and posture.
However, teams from Asia also put up a strong showing:
- Team PH21 of Thailand took home the first place in the Games category with project ‘Timelie’, a stealth puzzle game with a unique gameplay system;
- Team None Developers of Indonesia finished in second place with their game application, ‘Froggy and The Pesticides’ that aims to raise environmental awareness.
- In the Innovation category, Team Bit Masters of Sri Lanka placed second with their work ‘Amplus’, a low cost, easy to use, intelligent digital signage platform for advertising.
- Team BoneyCare from China clinched the Ability Award, an accolade that recognizes Imagine Cup student teams whose projects were geared toward accessibility and empowering people with disabilities with their cloud-based app aimed at helping people who stutter.
A total of 12 teams from Asia were in the running at the Imagine Cup World Finals, including from markets such as Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, India, Singapore, and Taiwan.
Held annually since 2003, the Microsoft Imagine Cup is the world’s premier student technology competition, known affectionately by participants as the “Olympics of student technology competitions”. For many of the teams, their journey to the Imagine Cup World Finals started way back in August, when students began forming their teams at schools all across the globe to compete on their local level to qualify for the world finals.
The Imagine Cup centers around three competitions: Games, Innovation and World Citizenship.
- Games: The Games Competition honors the best student games built on Microsoft platforms that are fun, original, well-made and has the potential to attract an enthusiastic audience.
- Innovation: The Innovation Competition honors applications that deliver technology innovations that advance user experiences in major categories such as social networks, search, classifieds or online shopping — or that create entirely new categories.
- World Citizenship: The World Citizenship Competition honors the applications or solutions with the greatest potential to make a positive contribution to the betterment of humanity. An entrant in the World Citizenship Competition might tackle a vexing social or medical problem, promote education or generally harness the power of technology to enrich lives.
