Imagine winning the Cup:Team Collectivists win the Sri Lanka Microsoft Imagine Cup!
The University of Colombo School of Computing won the Challenge Trophy for Microsoft Imagine Cup in the Software Design Invitational Sri Lanka Finals held on 29th April 2010 at the HNB Towers. They thus won the opportunity to represent the country in the software design invitational in the world finals to be held in Warsaw, Poland from 3rd to 8th July 2010.
What is the Imagine Cup?
The Imagine Cup is a student competition conducted by Microsoft Corporation, under 5 main categories: Software Design, Embedded Development, Game Design, Digital Media and IT Challenge.Among these five categories, the Software Design Invitational is the only one where a national level competition is held in each participating country to select a single team that would represent that country in the world finals.
Sri Lankan competition consisted of two rounds with round one used to shortlist the competing teams through their defence of a proposal for a solution. In round two, these shortlisted teams make a final presentation and a demonstration of the proposed solution to a panel of judges – who select a winning team for the world finals.
Imagine Cup 2010
This year’s competition was themed “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problemsâ€. The toughest problems referred to were interpreted to be those connected with the achievement of the United Nations 8 Millennium Development Goals. From 21 teams in the first round, 8 teams went into the finals including 3 teams from the UCSC.
After a tough competition Team Collectivist, consisting of Gayan Garusinghe, Sudam Liyanage, Chanaka Upendra and Hasini Adhikari, were selected as the winners of the Imagine Cup 2010 Sri Lanka finals and invited to represent Sri Lanka in Poland in the worldwide competition.
Winning Concept
The Winning concept was to create a a platform for the global community to engage in social action by supplying a set of tools necessary to enhance and ease their interaction on ongoing social welfare projects undertaken by them. Social workers are the focal point of the solution in which they are provided with the ability to map real world projects into cyber space in order to increase the awareness of the populace and engage larger and more representative people groups towards active participation in initiatives taken to change the world for the better.
Project overview: Speak Up! The solution Speak Up! is all about making a platform where people who do not have a voice use a “microphone” to speak louder to the global community and get people all over the world actively participating in achieving MDGs. The modern world is rich with technology we can use to address a wider audience in just one click. This is the first step of Speak Up. Our mission is to blend these technologies and tools in to a new platform where people in the world can inspire each other. They can share information about what sort of a project they are trying to deploy in their region in order to achieve a particular MDG and how the global community can help them in this endeavor. This information will inspire the world to give a helping hand. We give this step the tag line – Be Inspired! The second step of Speak Up! comes in to action when we blend technology with an inspired heart. Someone will find, with just a few clicks, that they can help a project in another corner of the world. It may be financial assistance or help securing goods. Speak Up! provides the facilities to act. It’s that simple. We give this step the tag line—Be Active!
The concept employs a number of existing tools and blends them in a new way to supply a specialized social network focused on assisting the achievement of the UN Millennium Goals.
Winning Team Experience in the Competition
The winning team has been in the Imagine Cup competition in different capacities over the past 4 years and was able to succeed in winning the trophy this year – a deserving reward for their perseverance. It was a challenge that was won over several obstacles and with undying enthusiasm. It’s a victory of made up of a combination of innovative ideas and technical capabilities that the UCSC can be proud of. For all the team members this was not our first time with Imagine Cup. Gayan and Hasini were active competitors in 2007 and were one of the best 30 teams in the Short Film category. In 2008 they were in the Sri Lankan finals for the Software Design category. In 2009 again they participated in Short Film. Now in 2010, here they are in the Worldwide Finals. Chanaka and Sudam were part of the 2008 Sri Lankan finalist list for Software Design.
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