ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your 2014 Imagine Cup World Championship Kate Yeager.
(Cheers, applause.)
KATE YEAGER: Guys, let’s hear it for the UW Marching Band.
(Cheers.)
Hello and welcome to the Imagine Cup everybody. Yes, I’ll take another. (Cheers, applause.)
Yes, it’s a competition, but more importantly it’s a celebration, a celebration of student innovation, student creativity, the power that these students from around the world have, not to look into the future, but to change it for the better.
This 12th installment of the Imagine Cup marks an important milestone. For the first time in history, the championship is being held in Microsoft’s hometown, the Pacific Northwest.
(Cheers, applause.)
Today we are guests of TechReady, a conference dedicated to Microsoft’s vision of the future. So it’s a tremendous opportunity for our student developers to meet their counterparts here at Microsoft. And to see firsthand what it’s like to bring technology to the real world. Tomorrow we’re inviting you and the entire Seattle community to visit our student developers at MOHAI, the Museum of History and Industry on the shores on the Lake Union. All the students will be there. You can bring your friends and family and check out all of these amazing projects in action.
So for our competitors the journey to Imagine Cup started long before they ever got on a plane to Seattle. It began months, sometimes years ago with an idea, a spark, a dream, not to mention countless nights, undoubtedly fueled by another local innovation, coffee. You’re about to see teams receive awards in three premier categories , and . Then each of the three firstplace-winning teams will compete on stage for the Imagine Cup.
So our finalists have seen unprecedented opportunities and experiences throughout the competitioneyond the $50,000 they take home the top team in each category will earn incredible opportunities. So we are fortunate enough to have three very special guests reside over the competition. This panel of luminaries have spent time this week getting to know the contestants and their technologies, evaluating each team on their concept, how innovative it is, how they’ve executed, and how they plan to bring it to market.
This morning the judges will lead a questionandanswer session on stage, three amazing teams, but only one can take home the cup. Our first judge is a Harvard graduate, an angel advisor, investor, he could be that, too, and a strategic advisor to startups like Facebook, Dropbox and Blueai. He is also the founder of Code.org, a nonprofit organization dedicated to encouraging people, especially students, to learn to code.
Please welcome Hadi Partovi. (Cheers, applause.)
Anyone who has read and asked me anything can recognize the second judge as general manager of Reddit. He helped grow the site into an incredibly influential, highly trafficked community, with more than 4.7 billion page views every month. That many other accomplishments landed him on Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people list not long ago. Please welcome Erik Martin. (Cheers, applause.)
Our third and final judge has brought the spirit of innovation to work each and every day of his 22-year Microsoft career. He’s spent a lifetime building things from his days at Mangalore University in India to leading one of the world’s largest organizations into the next age of computing. Get your cameras ready, ladies and gentlemen, the CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella. (Cheers, applause.)
Thank you judges and we’ll see you a little bit later in the show.
So across the last 12 years Imagine Cup has reached more than 1.7 million studentshis year, tens of thousands worldwide competed in more than 70 national, regional and global contests. And from all of those projects we invited 34 top teams to Seattle this week to work for our world championship. Now these students are about to step on stage alongside these three judges to compete for the highest honor, the Imagine Cup.
But, before we get to that please join me in welcoming a driving force behind Imagine Cup, Microsoft Corporate Vice President and Chief Evangelist Steve Guggenheimer.
STEVE GUGGENHEIMER: All right. Good morning everybody. Good morning. This is awesome, 12 years of doing Imagine Cup. We’ve been all over the world. We’ve been to Egypt. We’ve been to India, Australia, Korea, really faraway places like New York. We’ve done it for the first time, thoughas we brought it back here. So first off thank you to the TechReady audience for having us here today. We really appreciate it. Thanks to the students, our partners, the folks that are helping us, our Microsoft student partners that are here and then what an incredible judge panel. What an incredible panel of judges, hands up for them. (Applause.)
So I just have a couple of quick things this morning to get us going. We started with 33,000 students in more than 100 countries. We’re down to the top 34 teams from 34 different countries today, pretty big honor. We love the notion of what the students are doing. What you’ll notice this year over the course of the years in the past, these projects are becoming more refined. It’s not just about technology. It’s about the technology plus the user experience, plus an audience, plus a business model. It’s a project.
And so we come from a student-run startup. Microsoft started by a student who didn’t finish college. He kicked it off, grew this business and I think in the student-run startup category Microsoft stands out as one that did pretty well. So one of the things we want to do from that is for the winner of the Imagine Cup today whoever wins the prize, personal mentoring session from Bill Gates, the original startup mentor in our industry. (Cheers, applause.)
So that’s one piece. The second thing, we have Hadi here with us today. And one of the things we want to do over the next year is continue to grow the scale of the folks that participate in the Imagine Cup. Part of how we want to do that is we want to continue to scale not just universities around the world, but to a younger generation of developers. We’re seeing developers and entrepreneurs starting much younger today. And so we’re going to work on growing the breadth in which we work to younger and younger generations. And one of the things we want to do in partnership with Hadi on that, his organization Code.org has run something called an our of .
It turns out we have 7,000 Microsoft student partners around the globe who can take that program and take it to universities to high school, all around the world and get more and more students involved in coding. So we’re going to support Hadi. We’re going to pick up the of and we’re going to carry that forward, to try to grow the base of developers around the world. So thanks for kicking it off and we’re going to go there with you.
(Cheers, applause.)
All right. One last thing then we’ll get into the judging and the award winners. Every year when we come and do this we announced where we’re going to have the next year’s . I’ll tell you it’s been an incredible week. We learn a ton from the students. Getting the students their energy on campus as part of the One Week, getting the opportunity to have them interact with our developers and our teams, getting people to see the beautiful of Seattle, and getting the interactionslook it went really well. We got really good feedback. So we’re going to break precedent. We’re coming back here next year. We’re going to do it again.
Satya, let’s hear it for Satya. If we do One Week again we’ll line it up. But, lookI love the learning we get from the students. We love having you here. The feedback has been great. So we’ll see you again next year in Seattle here. Let’s go on with the show.
Thank you.
(Video segment.)
KATE YEAGER: Well, thank you, Guggs.
Let’s celebrate the winning students, shall we? But before we get to the three major award categories, let’s give a shout out to our partner award and challenge winners, who were honored earlier this week but are here with us now. Students, go ahead, stand up. There you go. Yes, there you are. Big round of applause. (Applause.)
Take a look around you. We have students here from many countries around the world, including Uganda, Japan, Venezuela, France and Jamaica. Together we are all citizens of the world.
So what does it mean to be a world citizen? What is one person’s responsibility compared to the billions of people on this planet? The Imagine Cup World Citizenship Competition embraces the belief that technology can be a powerful force for good, focuses on transforming how we think about health, education, social issues and the environment.
Some past winners in this category have built prototypes for determining blood types in emergency situations, and using smartphones to replace hearing aids. It’s kind of inspiring stuff, wouldn’t you agree?
To announce our winners, please welcome Microsoft’s General Counsel and Executive Vice President Brad Smith.
(Cheers, applause.)
BRAD SMITH: Good morning. I want to say how thrilled all of us from Microsoft are. We’re so thrilled to be here this morning. It’s a great pleasure just to recognize and honor such amazing student innovators from around the world.
At Microsoft we do a lot of work to advance our corporate citizenship, but the truth is this, there is nothing that is more important than the work we try to do to help youth improve their own futures and empower themselves and enrich their communities.
Our commitment to youth is embodied in our Global YouthSpark Initiative. It actually goes beyond citizenship. It goes beyond philanthropy. It includes a number of products and projects and programs offered by Microsoft as a whole. But if you step back and you think about it, it’s all about one thing. We’re trying to give young people the access to the tools and the opportunities to design, to build, to really deliver new technologies that will help make the world a better place.
Of everything that we do to support youth, nothing is more emblematic of what young people can accomplish, nothing is more symbolic of the opportunity we all have to bring the world together than the Imagine Cup. It is truly special. It gives young people the opportunity to show the world what you all can do. Your success here today at the Imagine Cup not only changes lives for those who participate, but someday for all of us in this room, for people around the world, we may wake up and find that something that we saw here has touched us and our families.
So let’s get to the three winners for the citizenship category beginning with our thirdplace winner. It is Access Earth from Ireland. (Cheers, applause.)
Congratulations, it’s fantastic. Here you go, congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. And there’s a little check here for $5,000. Congratulations. (Cheers, applause.)
(Video segment.)
Now on to the secondplace winner, which is Smart Crew from Taiwan. (Cheers, applause.)
Here you go. Congratulations. Congratulations. Here you go. Clearly this is the most important thing right here, but in addition to this you have a check that can go right underneath it if you’d like. Here you go. Congratulations. (Cheers, applause.)
(Video segment.)
And finally, in the category we have our firstplace winner, a team that receives $50,000 and an invitation to work with Microsoft YouthSpark for a week. That winner is Eyenaemia from Australia. (Cheers, applause.)
Congratulations. Congratulations. Here you go. (Cheers, applause.)
(Video segment.)
To Eyenaemia, to all of the teams that participated in the citizenship category, thank you, well done. (Cheers, applause.)
KATE YEAGER: Thank you, Brad. You’re going to see Eyenaemia in just a few minutes for their chance to compete for the Imagine Cup.
We all know playing games is a universal experience because they’re fun. They’re a healthy outlet for our competitive natures, a chance to vanquish opponents on an imaginary battlefield. And that is what the games category is all about.
To create a successful game developers must bring together a story, a challenge, logic, design, interaction, engineering and so, so much more. Our winner today has unlocked that achievement.
Here to announce the winners is a titan in the field, the creator of Tetris, a Microsoft veteran, a true master of game development, Alexey Pajitnov.
(Cheers, applause.)
ALEXEY PAJITNOV: Thank you games. It’s amazing to think how much gaming has changed since Tetris was first released in ’84. (Cheers, applause.)
So from Xbox One to mobile game platforms empower almost limitless creativity. And today the game is much more immersive, challenging and much more fun than ever before, I think. And it’s very inspiring to see what student teams have accomplished. And now let’s see who wins the prize.
So the third prize goes to Illogic Egypt. (Cheers, applause.)
That’s for you. That part for you. That’s for you. And the last part. Don’t run away. That small check for whatever, $5,000. Great job guys. (Cheers, applause.)
(Video segment.)
Now the second place. Second place goes to BomBom Korea. (Cheers, applause.)
Great job guys, congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations. Congratulations, don’t run away. That’s the important part. (Cheers, applause.)
(Video segment.)
And finally the Oscar goes to, wow, so the firstplace team will take home a $50,000 prize and all-expense paid trip both to PAXDev and PAX Prime festival, which is where they will spend four days demoing their game. And the winner is, could you believe it, Brainy Studio Russia. (Cheers, applause.) My compatriots.
(Video segment.)
ALEXEY PAJITNOV: Hey! (Cheers, applause.) Congratulations. (Cheers, applause.)
KATE YEAGER: Thank you, Alexey. And we’ll see Brainy Studio out here in not too long competing for the cup.
The Imagine Cup’s Innovation category comprises social networks, music services, digital photography apps, gadgets and robotics, the list goes on.
So that’s the future, and you’re about to see it for yourself right here, right now.
To announce our Innovation winners, let’s welcome back Guggs. (Cheers, applause.)
STEVE GUGGENHEIMER: All right, three more to go before the live competition. This is the Innovation category, it’s my favorite, because , you don’t actually know what you’re looking for, but when you see it, you know you found it, and that’s the beauty of innovation.
So let’s jump right in, let’s start with the third-place winner. The third-place winner goes to ButterFly Bahrain. This is a very cool solution. Where’s the team from Bahrain? (Cheers, applause, music.) So great, so great. Congratulations, well done. Thank you. I have a 16-year-old daughter, she loves your stuff. So you guys are perfect for that. Let’s get the photo, here’s the check, sorry. I forgot the important part. There we go, I’ll help hold it. (Cheers, applause, music.)
All right, let’s go ahead and look at the solution.
(Video segment.)
STEVE GUGGENHEIMER: (Cheers, applause.) I’ve got to tell you, as the father of a 16-year-old daughter, she knew innovation when she saw that one. (Laughter.)
Let’s jump up to now. Second place in the Innovation category, another awesome, awesome team, Tep from Hungary. Come on, Tep team. (Cheers, applause, music.)
Way to go. Way to go. Here you go. (Applause, music.) There you go. All right. Now we’re up here. We’ve got the 10K check. (Cheers, applause, music.)
(Video segment.)
STEVE GUGGENHEIMER: (Cheers, applause.) All right. Now we get to , and the third contestant in the final round for the overall Imagine Cup winner. In the Innovation category, they also receive a 50K check. But in addition, we’re going to do a four-week accelerator, mini version of an acceleratorhrough Microsoft Ventures, so you’re going to join the Microsoft Ventures Accelerator in the country or location closest to you.
So here we go. The , do we have some Kiwis in the house from Estimeet? Come on up. (Cheers, applause, music.) Well done. Well done. (Music.) Awesome job.
Let me get the really big check here. I’ll hold this below, you got the other end of it? (Cheers, applause, music.)
(Video segment.)
STEVE GUGGENHEIMER: (Cheers, applause.) One more hand for Estimeet and all the Innovation winners. (Cheers, applause.) All right, I’m going to have you guys go that way.
We’re going to invite Kate back out. (Music.)
KATE YEAGER: Thanks, Guggs. And Estimeet, we will see them in just a moment.
, so you’ve seen finalists and winners from across all three premier categories: World Citizenship, Games and Innovation. There’s only one thing left to do: Decide which of the first-place teams will take home the Imagine Cup.
So you’re about to witness a question-and-answer competition that unfolds on this stage in three rounds, each one based on the competition’s three principles.
Right now, each of the three teams are on even ground. How they answer each of the judges’ questions will go a long way in determining who is the champion.
So the first round is the Dream It round. What inspired these teams? What was the spark that led to the idea? The second round is the Build It round. The questions will be about the technology behind the idea, the nuts and bolts of how this stuff works.
The final round is the Live It round. An invention is only useful if you can bring it to the world. So what are the business plans that will make these projects viable? We’ll dig into how these students plan to market their innovation. Are you ready? Yeah.
So I hope our judges are. Let’s welcome back Erik, Hadi and Satya. (Cheers, applause, music.)
Welcome back, guys. (Music.) Now, judges, you’ve all done your homework. You are familiar with the projects that earned these teams a trip here today. Now, it’s your job to decide who will take home the Imagine Cup, and with it, a personal meeting with Bill Gates.
So let’s bring out our finalists. The winners of the World Citizenship category, Eyenaemia from Australia. (Cheers, applause.) The winners of the Games category, Brainy Studio from Russia. (Cheers, applause.) The winners of the Innovation category, Estimeet from New Zealand. (Cheers, applause.)
All right, teams. Welcome to the Imagine Cup. Are you excited? Yeah.
Our three judges have prepared questions for you. Now, you’re only going to have 90 seconds to answer each question. And, yes, you will be on the clock.
So when you’re asked the question, your team can huddle to decide if you want to answer in a specific way. But remind yourselves, that goes against your 90-second time limit.
So you’ll know you’re getting close to time expiring when you hear this music. (Music.) So if you exceed the time allowed, true story, I’m not afraid to interrupt. That’s the truth.
Judges, , this is going to be a tricky part for you guys. You may be tempted to ask a lot of questions, but in each round, you only get one. Make it count.
Students, we’ll begin with the Dream It round. Let’s talk about how you got your idea and here you found your inspiration. Hadi, the first question is to you over at the World Citizenship Team, Eyenaemia.
HADI PARTOVI: So, obviously, helping detect anemia is a very important thing to do. My question is: How did you think that you could do that using a mobile app? And what made you think of using the color card?
EYENAEMIA: So why we thought we could do this using a mobile app. This idea of using conjunctiva color is not a new one. It’s been around for thousands of years. We get taught that in medical schools, dates back to the days of Hippocrates.
We combined old teachings with modern technology and used color standards that are widely used in photography. And we thought that we could make something better than just eyeballing it — so to speak.
EYENAEMIA: So with the mobile app, our whole kind of idea came from, , selfies are big right now. We want people to be able to do something that they’re used to doing, something such as taking a selfie, and be able to identify it.
At the end of the day, what we want to do is ensure that preventable causes of anemia are picked up before it’s too late, that you identify it, and that they are actually treated. So that’s pretty much how —
EYENAEMIA: Yeah, and we’ve been in the medical field, even though we’ve only just got our medical training. We’ve seen many people affected by anemia, and we’ve seen it in remote areas. We’ve seen people who — even in Australia, a developed country — who aren’t able to access healthcare because they’re so far away from the nearest clinic. And that’s what really drove us to seek a better solution.
KATE YEAGER: . (Cheers, applause.) And, Erik, your question for the Games team, Brainy Studio.
ERIK MARTIN: Brainy Studio, we heard about the inspiration with Earth Hour for the overall game, but tell us what inspired you to create this visual world? Tell us about what sparked you to do the look and even the music of this world you’ve created?
BRAINY STUDIO: Yeah. The inspiration for us was Earth Hour. Yes. And we want to create a unique game atmosphere. And we want to make not the 3D game, not the 2D game, we want to mix that and to make two-and-a-half-D game. Because we think it’s a really great mix, and our visual style artist, he made this great job. And, yeah. (Laughter.) Thank you.
BRAINY STUDIO: My visual style in the game, it’s like a very simple style because it’s straight lines, really simple shapes. I think that it could be very interesting and looks really cool in the game. I don’t know how it will look in the game, so I just made it. And so, wow, it’s . Everybody love it. So this is it.
BRAINY STUDIO: And that’s what the game inspire and theme inspire us to make this graphic style, it was the cartoon Paranormal. It’s really great. (Laughter.) (Cheers, applause.)
KATE YEAGER: And for our last question in the Dream It round, Satya. Over to the Innovation team, Estimeet.
SATYA NADELLA: It’s an amazing app. I was just wondering, you have some inspirational stories to tell from your friends perhaps? Or what made you build this? Were your friends usually late to parties? Or what was it? (Laughter.)
ESTIMEET: Yes, so the kind of friends we have, as you know, obviously, 60 percent of them are late all the time. (Laughter.)
SATYA NADELLA: Man, that’s accurate.
ESTIMEET: So there was this time we were meeting at the train station. And one of our friends said they would be right there in five minutes. And as you can imagine, we were still waiting there two hours later. (Laughter.)
That’s just one of the few examples. When you walk down the street, you can see everyone, people on their phones waiting for people asking, “Where are you? How long will you be? Are you even on your way?” So that’s what our app tries to answer. It answers all these questions in a simple interface.
ESTIMEET: Because we found that people were very sensitive about their information sharing, that’s why we decided to not share their exact location with their friends. That’s one of the different things about our app.
ESTIMEET: But then I guess, for the Imagine Cup, we had four members in our team. One of them would be constantly late to the meetings. (Laughter.) And then, funnily enough, he wasn’t able to make it here today. (Laughter.) (Cheers, applause.) But that’s a whole entire different reason, we won’t blame him for that. Just want to say we made it. (Laughter.) (Cheers, applause.)
KATE YEAGER: . Well done, teams. We’re going to go on to the second round called the Built It round. In this round’s questions, it will be about all the technology behind your project, how you actually built them, and how you brought your ideas to life.
So Satya, we’re going back to you, the first question is yours for the Games team, Brainy Studio.
SATYA NADELLA: So you used the Unity Engine, and obviously, it’s a mobile app. So I know that you also have some ideas around virtual reality. So give me a little bit of how you want to extend this with what you’ve built, to what I think is an emerging trend around games.
BRAINY STUDIO: So we really like the virtual reality technology, and we think we as the developers can help a little bit to spread it worldwide. So we decided we would like to make this support of that technology in our game.
And what we did, we didn’t have, for example, normal glasses for us. So we decided to make hand-made virtual reality glasses. Yes, we take the big Windows Phone, Nokia Lumia 1520, yes, and use it as a screen. Use the accelerometer in it, and we write some code in Unity to divide the cameras for the left eye to the right eye.
And we did it really great — you can just look at after that. (Laughter.)
SATYA NADELLA: Two video screens, basically?
BRAINY STUDIOS: Technically, yes. But when you put on the virtual reality glasses, you see the 3D effect. And we tried to make the design of our game really for the 3D, like roller coasters from the different side of you, because we had wires. And we have a demo version in the Windows Phone Store, so you can download it and try it. (Cheers, applause.)
KATE YEAGER: Let’s move on to Hadi, a question for the Innovation team.
HADI PARTOVI: Right. So, Estimeet, you guys are building what is naturally a social and viral app. And by the choice of going on the Windows platform, if I want to organize something with a bunch of friends, have you thought about using either HTML 5 or going cross-platform, so the other friends I want to meet up with can respond to me to tell me where they are?
ESTIMEET: Yeah. Our next step is building cross-platform. We are planning to the next three months or so release this app to all three platforms. About HTML 5, we’re going to look into it. We don’t have much knowledge in this area yet.
HADI PARTOVI: And how about for friends who don’t even have the app? Can they use it using HTML 5 using their Web browser on their phone?
ESTIMEET: Yeah, we’ll look into it. (Laughter.)
HADI PARTOVI: All right.
SATYA NADELLA: They’re mobile first. (Laughter.)
ESTIMEET: So for people who don’t even have the app, we were thinking about integrating Facebook into our app as well. So post the events from Facebook as well as your friends. And that will be a very easy way, leveraging off a market.
And, yeah, in terms of the development, we are looking into a three to six-month development process for those platforms. So we will then enable friends on any type of platform to meet up together in a smarter way. (Applause.)
KATE YEAGER: And, , the final question in the Build It round is for you. World Citizenship team.
ERIK MARTIN: Eyenaemia, so you do the image processing in the cloud. It seems like this has a lot of potential for areas where they may not have access to the cloud yet. What are the possibilities for doing the processing locally or in some other method?
EYENAEMIA: So, I’ll answer this question in two ways. So the first is, why did we choose to build it in the cloud? So we believe that this is a mobile-first, cloud-first world. (Cheers, applause.) And this century is going to be marked by the fact that humans can now extend their powers beyond their minds, just like the steam engine let us extend our physical powers beyond our muscles I believe that the cloud computing revolution can let us extend our minds beyond what we can do normally.
For instance, not just to do new things, but to do old things better and faster. So even, like you said, there are some areas that can’t access the cloud. But what we’ve found is that in a lot of areas, even in villages in Africa, places that you don’t expect to even have running water, they do have a mobile phone, they have 2G access.
And by putting it on the cloud, we enable our program to run on every platform. And I mean every platform. Not just iOS, Android, Windows Phone — I mean feature phones, cameras, anything that can take a photo and anything that can reach a Web browser. And that means that we can reach the most number of people everywhere, worldwide. (Cheers, applause.)
Regarding the possibility of putting it locally, that is definitely possible. The processing can be offloaded onto a normal PC or desktop. In fact, that was what my first prototype was. (Cheers, applause.)
KATE YEAGER: . Excellent answers all around, you guys. So there’s one round left, though, and that’s the Live It round. It’s about how you plan to bring your technologies to market. So let’s get to it. Erik, please begin the round with a question for the innovation team.
ERIK MARTIN: Estimeet, you guys have a lot of competition out there from existing services, some of which are very big competitors. And you also have a “freemium” model. What type of premium features do you think people would be willing to pay for versus all the free services out there?
ESTIMEET: Yeah, so the main difference we have with our competitors is the privacy. And I think we can appeal to a lot of users out there. We think they don’t want to disclose their exact location to their friends.
With regard to the premium features, we think that our app — like if you meet up at a café in advance, set up a meeting next week. We can think of, like, discounts that you can provide to your friends meeting up.
For the premium features, you could talk about —
ESTIMEET: Yeah, so we’ll be providing a free for a trial period. And after that, there will be restrictions on how many meetings they can have per month. And they can unlock it through an in-app purchase.
KATE YEAGER: , cool. (Applause.) Oh, yes. Satya, you question for the World Citizenship team?
SATYA NADELLA: I like the way you thought about the world as developing and developed, and even though about the business model for the two. Maybe you want to talk a little bit about maybe insurance companies in the developed world and what they may do with your app. And then in the developing world, you talked about NGOs and other organizations. So tell me a little more about how you plan to go to market with these governmental or nongovernmental organizations.
EYENAEMIA: So I have to admit that my experience with insurance companies is lacking. I come from Australia, and we live in a world of socialized medicine. (Cheers, applause.)
But to the best of my ability, I will answer your question. So we think that insurance companies can use this as a preventative health measure. We don’t think that health is something that some people are working against. Like some people seem to think that insurance companies don’t want people to be healthy. And we don’t think that’s true.
We think that insurance companies play a big role in preventative health because it’s in their interest. You don’t want someone to go to the hospital and have to do thousands of dollars of payouts.
And we think insurance companies can actually use this to tell you, to give them impetus to improve their own health. And we see that this is going to happen in a lot of places.
I’m sure all of you are here are familiar with the Quantified Self movement, and that really strikes at the heart of it, to use data, big data, to monitor our own bodies in the way that we monitor everything else in the world, to make that universal.
EYENAEMIA: In regards to NGOs and partnerships. So, currently, we can imagine Eyenaemia working everywhere. It is the world’s first simple, noninvasive, and easily accessible tool for screening anemia. (Cheers, applause.)
I’ll answer really quickly because we have seven seconds. We’ve already had our app in hospitals within Australia, and the next step is going to be partnering with every single health organizations — (music covers remainder of answer.) (Cheers, applause.)
KATE YEAGER: Under the wire, I love it. (Cheers, applause.) Hadi, you have the honor of asking the last question in the competition. Over to the Games team.
HADI PARTOVI: I was waiting for somebody to run over the time and hear that sound. (Laughter.)
So my question for you guys, you know, your app is basically a game, but it was inspired by electricity conservation, energy conservation. So similar to the World Citizenship team, have you thought about using NGOs or nonprofits as a distribution mechanism? Distribution is one of the hardest things for games initially.
BRAINY STUDIO: So we didn’t think about that. (Laughter.) But, yes, it’s a great question. We need to think about this. I have one minute and 10 seconds. (Laughter.) (Cheers, applause.) I think we will do it. We will definitely do it.
HADI PARTOVI: Let me ask differently: What are your ideas for distribution?
BRAINY STUDIO: Yes, this is a good question. (Laughter.) (Cheers, applause.) So we want to make monetization model “freemium.” It’s a free demo version with one episode, and full version with fixed price. Because we don’t think that the advertising model is suitable for us because the kids also may play our game. And for you to play, it’s not also our story. Because we thought it’s like free-to-play movie, just imagine. You start watching this movie, and after 15 minutes, you get a message, “Oh, you ran out of energy, you need to wait 24 hours to continue watching the movie.”
So our model is demo and full version with a fixed price. And we have some money to promote our game, so — (Laughter.) (Cheers, applause.)
KATE YEAGER: Well, that does it. Three rounds of questions are complete. Guys, these are some brave students. Let’s give them a round of applause for our three Imagine Cup contenders. (Cheers, applause.)
And the are hard work for judges, too. So in a moment, we’re going to give them a quick break backstage to deliberate. In the meantime, we’ve got a special guest who would like to say a few works.
BILL GATES: (Video message.) Congratulations to all of you for the work you’ve done so far in the Imagine Cup. The great thing about young innovators is that they see things the rest of us don’t. They have a fresh perspective and a new way of looking at old problems.
When Paul Allen and I were starting Microsoft, we pulled all-nighters and worked 18-hour days. We were nonstop, and it was really wonderful.
When I talk to innovators today and hear about their ideas, it takes me back to those early days.
One of the amazing things about software development is that one or two people with a great idea sitting in a dorm room or a garage can make a huge impact.
With today’s technologies like cloud computing and easy download to mobile devices, the opportunity to have a big impact very quickly is larger than ever.
The Imagine Cup is an excellent way to recognize and reward young innovators, and encourage them to keep working on ideas that can change the world.
I’m looking forward to meeting the students who take home this year’s Imagine Cup. Good luck to all of you. (Cheers, applause.)
SATYA NADELLA: All right. (Cheers, applause.) It’s been an amazing week for us at Microsoft. We did our first companywide hackathon this week and we had over 100,000 people all participating.
And then to have a chance on Friday to come here and spend time with student developersI wish every week was like this where you just live amongst developers all the time.
And it’s just exciting. I mean, if you think about it, just seeing Bill speak, we are the original student developer company and the original tools company. And to have that inspiration that comes from listening and talking and seeing developers imagine things. And especially the young developers. I mean, the ideas we saw this morning amongst the winners. I was also looking at all the various teams that competed. First of all, give all of yourselves a round of applause. You were fantastic. (Cheers, applause.)
The thing that is perhaps most exciting to me is we live in a time where we can imagine the impossible and make it probable. And you saw it in the finalists, you saw it in the other winners. There’s just boundless imagination and the possibilities of what technology can do to any walk of life. And that’s what makes it exciting.
And to be able to take that power, the power of software and the tools and democratize innovation, starting with the youth is something that’s truly inspirational for us at Microsoft and it’s great to see all of you compete and compete with a spirit that I think is only going to make each one of us better. So thank you for participating, thank you, and congratulations to the winners.
But I want to have Erik and Hadi also come up and share some thoughts. One of the things I’m really excited about is this tradition of perhaps bringing back all of you to Seattle to celebrate your boundless imagination. Thank you. (Applause.) Hadi?
HADI PARTOVI: As somebody who’s been trying to get students around the world to learn computer programming and just get started with the basics, it’s just amazing to me to see not only these finalists, but also the teams before them as well. The level of technical excellence in all of the apps you guys have created is just stunning. That’s what I’d say.
SATYA NADELLA: That’s awesome. Erik?
ERIK MARTIN: Yeah, so Reddit is also a student startup. You know, Reddit has not won any design awards, it looks like it’s from the ’90s perhaps. (Laughter.) So I was especially impressed with just how good all of these different programs looked. The UX on them, how easy they are to use for anyone around the world. And just the level of detail and polish is really, really impressive. (Applause.)
SATYA NADELLA: So are we ready for the award?
ERIK MARTIN: I think we have a winner picked.
SATYA NADELLA: I think so. I think so. Are you going to give me my cue? All right, thank you so much. I mean, I must say, everyone should think of themselves in the finalists as winners. It’s just amazing. The stories behind your ideas were equally impressive, and I thought you all did fantastic in responding to all the questions. You know, that 90-second thing, I didn’t know what to ask, and you did much better than me. (Laughter.)
So the three of us, we spent exactly 90 seconds deciding. It was great to come to a unanimous decision, it is Eyenaemia from New Zealand. (Cheers, applause, music.) Congratulations. (Cheers, applause, music.)
(Closing music.)
END
