Microsoft’s Imagine Cup Tech Competition for students

Microsoft India has announced the launch of Imagine Cup 2014 for all the young techies and student developers of the country. Referred to as the ‘Olympics of Technology’, the Imagine Cup is a global student technology program and competition that provides opportunities for students across all disciplines to team up and use their creativity and knowledge of technology to create applications, games and integrated solutions.

This premier student technology competition was launched 12 years back and over 1.65 million students from more than 190 countries have shown active participation for the competition.

What's new about Imagine Cup 2014?

The online challenges at Imagine Cup change every year. Retiring from the three technology-based challenges of 2013, Microsoft has kicked off three new non-technology challenges, which are listed below:

• Pitch Video Challenge (September-October): Record a three to five minute video with your team pitching your project! The very competition is underway and the registrations are open for the same.
• Project Blueprint Challenge (November-December): Think deep and deliver a written project proposal covering your users, requirements, scenarios, and business model.
• User Experience Challenge (January-February): How will people actually use your software? Show your user flow, wireframes, and a visual target for how your software will look on screen.

Participants of these challenges stand a chance to win a US $3,000 cash prize each. The top ten teams from each category will be honoured as Challenge All-Stars and rewarded with exclusive Imagine Cup lapel pins and certificates of victory.

Eligibility:

Anyone who is 16 years or older as of September 10, 2013 and is or will be enrolled as a student at any time between January 1, 2013 and July 31, 2014 can apply.

The competition:

The Imagine Cup encompasses three main competitions - Games, Innovation, and World Citizenship. For the same, you and your team will be required to make an original technology project from the very beginning to the end. This is how you do it:

1. Come up with a great idea
2. Make a plan
3. Build your project
4. Submit it to Imagine Cup

The project can be either purely software or a combination of software and hardware. It needs to use Windows, Windows Phone, or Windows Azure.

Besides this, the competition also includes various online challenges that don't require you to create software.

Your team:

You can have a team of maximum four eligible students. Other people too can give you a helping hand. People like:

• Mentor: a faculty member, who advises you on your project
• Associates: eligible students that can help you with business model planning, marketing, music or sound effects creation, and so on

Competition venue:

The competition takes place in countries all over the world. The best teams from those countries are selected for National Finals who then enter the World Semifinals. The best of those teams win a trip to Seattle in July 2014 for the Imagine Cup World Finals.

The award:

The award or the prize depends on the contest but the top teams in Microsoft's three main competitions win $50,000.

Registration:

Registrations are now open at www.imaginecup.com