Microsoft Imagine Cup 2004

Hi...

Just returned from Bangalore last nite finishing off with the
Microsoft Imagine Cup 2004.

We were the National Finalists from North India + East India ,
representing 23 states and union territories of India at the India
Finals of the Microsoft Imagine Cup, from IEC College Of Engineering
And Technology. The West Zone was represented by VESIT, Mumbai and the
South Zone by Sir M Visvesvaraya Institute of Technology, Bangalore.

The news is...'we lost' it to mumbai. But it was a terrific experience
to come far at this stage.It was a grand event with a huge audience in
the three-storey auditorium of PESIT, Bangalore. We had interesting
speeches from the industry and the academia. It was great to meet
people from different parts of the world....and nice to meet Howard
from Singapore...( have been reading some of his blogs lately..It'as
great to meet him in person) It was also nice to see Stanley who had
come along.

There was a strange co-incidence. All the three teams had built an app
for the student community. How come all three of us thought of the
same idea...interesting co-incidence ! So it was a tough competition
because now the judgement scale was nearly 'same'.

We presented our system in a 15 minute presentation to the Bangalore
audience with a 5 min ques-ans with the judges.

Well THANKS to everybody for all their wishes through e-mails ,
smses, and calls...they really went a long way for us to reach the
India Final stage...(to be among the top 3 teams among 700-800
participating teams from all over India)

Would like to mention a few names here...

Special THANKS to Amit Reddy, one of my college senior passouts for
the great support we got from him throughout our Imagine Cup journey
for all these 3 stages (thanks a lot for those long meetings and
your great help always ). Thanks to Scoble for helping me out online
during my second round...His ideas really deserve appreciation. Thanks
Scoble ! BIG thanks to Sriram for all the help and support on phone
from chennai during the second round. Also thanks to Saurabh for
coming down to Bangalore and helping us out in things. And thanks to
Ashwani at the Microsoft Delhi Office for his support.

After the three presentations we had a Sister Stella show which really
pleased the audience. And a special 'song' by Ashutosh from Bangalore
on the 'Lagaan' theme really rocked everybody !

When I was packing up for Bangalore, I was told by people here that I
would really love delivering my presentation to Bangalore as the
audience there is really 'lively'...and that's really true. It was
great to have such a lovely audience..

Cheers !

Anupam Jain

Anupam Jain