Charles just uploaded a bunch of videos from the Imagine Cup accelerator event in London. You can now watch the final presentation from each of the teams on Channel9. If you're just interested in our demo, jump ahead to 04:15 in the video.

Imagine Cup Innovation Accelerator: Team Norway - MediWatch
All Channel9 videos tagged with Imagine Cup

Day 2
Time fly's and we're already at the fourth day of the event. Sunday was the first day out at the Microsoft Campus and their Technology Centre/Innovation Centre. We spent most of the day in a conference room going trough the agenda for the two weeks. Tim Stevens from British Telecom did an awesome presentation of their Web21C SDK, which basically let's you use their infrastructure with a bunch of .NET one liners.

Making two phones ring is a simple as:
btCall.StartCall(caller, calle);

To send an SMS you just do:
btMessage.SendMessage(message, recipient);

You get the idea. Now if only more telecom companies where as agile as BT and made their services this approachable!  If you want to learn more about the SDK it's publically available in beta, so check out their site at http://sdk.bt.com. I'm really looking forwarding using their SDK in our project for SMS and positioning!

We also got some information about the infrastructure we have available over the two weeks. We basically get's two really powerful developers stations, with what ever operating system we want. Since we're doing some Media Center stuff we went with three Vista Ultimate machines and one 2003 server. Microsoft had pre-configured a Team Foundation Server, so each team got their own project portal to work on. Super sweet!

After the introductions and presentations at the campus we went for dinner at a local Indian restaurant, but I got a really bad headache and went to bed early.

Day 3
We started out Monday with a few presentations, first one was an opening talk by Kevin Nickles who talked about entrepreneurship and doing a startup. Dr Allyson Reed gave shared some of her experience from running start ups and had some really interesting stories to tell.  After the business related talks Carrie and Paul from Microsoft Consulting in Reading did an excellent talk on Windows Presentation Foundation and user experiences. Carrie is talking at Desingertopia, so I'm looking forward that. Carrie and Paul is going to be with us over the two weeks to help us out with anything related to user experience. Microsoft is really investing lots of time and effort into this event, and we have all the resources and people we need available to get the most out of these to weeks, and take our projects forwards. I don't know the exact number of people involved, but we have tech support, user interface experts, MBA's to help us with business stuff, developers from BT to help us with the SDK etc.

Day 4
Today have been the most productive day so far. We've spent the entire day (from 09.00 to 22:00) working on our application. We basically decided to work on the design and architecture from India, but re-write most of the code and use the latest and greatest in technology. By the end of the day we had most of the database, data logic and infrastructure up and running. We're using C# 3.0 and LINQ for all the data access stuff, so that saved us a ton of time. I spent most of the day in Photoshop and did both the new web UI, the smart phone UI and the Vista Sidebar gadgets. Gøran focused on the smart phone application, and the plug-in framework for health monitoring devices is coming together really nicely. We also have some really cool UI stuff for the smart phone up our sleeves, so watch out!

I've uploaded a few screenshots of what we're working on, and I've allso uploaded some pictures on my Flickr site.

Smart phone UI


Gadget docked to the sidebar


Gadget floating on the desktop

We've arrived in Reading, and have settled in at the fancy new "elements" hotel in the centre of Reading. We've spent the night catching up with old friends from the other teams over a nice dinner. The other teams attending the Imagine Cup Accelerator programs are Italy, Brazil, Germany, Croatia and China. So the teams are spread out all over the globe.

The agenda for tomorrow is information and briefings, and a tour at the Microsoft Innovation Centre here in Reading.

Now I'm going to hit the bathtub with a cold coke and a audio books on my iPod!

The next chapter of our Imagine Cup experience starts tomorrow. We're (me, Gøran and Hans Olav) leaving for the Imagine Cup accelerator program in Reading, London tomorrow. I don't know exactly what to expect, but the agenda looks really interesting. Two full weeks of technical training, business training, new technology, and catching up with new and old friends. I really haven't had time to think much about the accelerator program, and all the sudden the day has arrived.

I didn't expect Imagine Cup to take me to all these places when entering our draft to the Norwegian competition all most a year ago. Nordic final in Oslo, world final in India, TechEd in Barcelona, and now the accelerator program in London.

I'll bring my camera, and post pictures and off course blog frequently trough out the event.

I'm back in Trondheim Saturday January 27., but only for a couple of days. I got an invitation to the new designer focused Microsoft conference Designertopia. The conference is all about design, user experience, AJAX, WPF, WPF-E, 3D and off course Microsoft's new tools to aid designers. Since my girl friend is studying design this is a perfect event for her, so we're both going. So I'll be leaving back to London January 31, and the conference is a two day event starting February 1.

And after Designertopia I'm flying directly to Oslo for the first MSDN Live event this winter. So as you probably the next three weeks is going to be busy and super exiting! I'll keep you posted!

Yesterday I had my Channel9 debut. During TechEd in Barcelona Hans Olav and I did an interview with Charles from Channel9, and now the video is finally up. We talk about our Imagine Cup experience and demo our application. Head over to Channel9 and check out the video and post a comment!

Just a quick post with some link to various press coverage during and after the Imagine Cup World finals. I've allso uploaded some new pictures to my Flickr page.

• Adressavisen: NTNU-bronse i India
• Adressavisen: NTNU-studenter i verdenstoppen
• Dagbladet: Nerde-bronse
• Computerworld: Cup-feber i India
• Computerworld: Tredjeplass for NTNU-studenter
• Fredrikstad blad: Til topps i Imagine Cup?
• Fredrikstad blad: Til "data-VM" i India
• Nordlys: Lakselv-studenter kan nå helt til tops
• Nordlys: Gjør suksess i India
• Nordlys: Lakselvgutter i verdenstoppen

 

This is the last night in India. What an amazing week! We've had so much stuff to do all the time that It feels like we've been her for way more than 9 days.

The last few days have been just amazing! Wednesday evening we got the message that we made it trough to the final six. Together with Denmark, Italy, Brazil, China and Japan we where going to compete in the final championship round in Dehli. We left from Agra 5 in the morning on Thursday and went straight to the convention centre where the final round was held. We where the first team presenting our solution. The final round was an open presentation where the other students competing in the Imagine Cup was invited to watch the final 6 presentations. I don't know the exact number, but I guess there where between 200 and 300 people watching the final presentations.

Once we where done presenting our solution we spend the entire day at the convention watching the other teams giving their software design presentations. After the software design presentations we got a chance to watch the contributions in user interface design and short film. Some of the Windows Presentation Foundation applications where just amazing. Even better than Microsoft's own showcases! The films where great too. Will post a link as soon as the short film contributions are available online.

All the winners where announced Friday during the "World festival", where Microsoft executives, the Indian minister of technology, gave some great speeches.

After seeing the other teams final presentations we didn't have to high expectations, but man it felt good when we where announced as number three in the software design category! The price was 10.000$, a nice trophy, and an invitation to spend 14 days in Reading (UK) at Microsoft/BT's expenses to develop the idea further.

After the winners where announced we had to lots of interviews, Indian newspapers, Japanese computer magazines, Indonesian TV and all kinds of other strange Asian media. We've also gotten some good press back in Norway, so when I get back to Trondheim I'll collect all the online articles and put up some links. For now I'll just link to the Dagbladet article titled "geek bronze".

Later Friday night Microsoft threw a great pool party, with great food and free drinks. Because of Dehli regulations they had to turn down the music quite early, so later that night we went into Dehli city to one of the most popular nightclubs in the city. That was an really interesting experience, will post more pictures later. Was back at the hotel room 4AM.

Today we've been relaxing at the hotel before visiting a "Bazar", which basically was like an "underground" station with tons of shops selling all kind of fake crap. "iPod shulffles" with display, Sony 4gb mp4 player and TONS of copied PS2, Xbox and computer games. The only thing they couldn't copy was the Sony PSP games, so the price was about the same as in Norway. After some heavy barging i managed to get Syphon Filter Dark Mirror for one third of the Norwegian price, so good deal.

Anyhow, we're leaving for Norway Sunday morning, but because of terror threats we need to be at the airport 5 hours in advance. Will post more pictures and links when I'm back home in Trondheim… Looking forward to that after a tough, but amazing, week!

 

 

This week I'll be attending the Imagine Cup world finals in India. We flew from Oslo early Friday morning, and arrived in Dehli late Friday night. After a short stop for some food and refreshments in Dehli we jumped in the buss and drew for four hours to Agra. The drive was _really_ interesting. Even tough we where driving in the middle of the night there were people walking along the road everywhere. People sleeping on the roof of their truck or buss. Crowds of cows walking in the middle of the street. A gang of monkeys looking at us from the rooftops of buildings that looked like the where going to collapse any moment. Jan Kristian took lots of pictures which he will upload to his Flickr site soon.

We arrived at the Jaypee Palace hotel early Saturday morning. After almost 24 hours of travelling. We've spent the first day in India relaxing in the sun, bathing, talking to the hotel monkey, and doing some preparations for the contest.

Later tonight we're going to check out the Hotell Spa and perhaps get a massage or something.

The Norwegian online edition of the Norwegian magazine “Teknisk Ukeblad” has published an article about the Nordic Imagine Cup finals. The printed version of the magazine comes out 40 issues a week, with a print of 90.000 copies. You can check out the article over at http://www.tu.no/nyheter/ikt/article53247.ece.

The last couple of days have been super busy. After the Microsoft days in Stavanger I went straight to Oslo to compete with Team NTNU in the Nordic finals of Imagine Cup. After a nice dinner at Aker Brygge we went straight to the hotel room to finish the prototype. We had some issues, and weren’t finished with the scenarios we wanted to implement until 07 in the morning!

Guess what, we actually won the finals! We competed against a Finish and a Danish team, who both had nice projects to show off. The first price was a brand new Qtek Smartphone and a trip to the world finals in India in beginning of August!

 

For those of you waiting for the slides from Bergen and Stavanger, I’ll have them ready after Microsoft days in Trondheim Monday.

Have to run, barely time for a quick shower before heading out on town for some celebrating!

In the mean time, check out Jan Kristians “live” coverage of the Nordic finals on his Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/j-k/sets/72057594125728297/

 

Just got the word from Microsoft Norway, our team is going to represent Norway in the Nordic finals of Imagine Cup 2006. I don’t want to talk that much about the idea yet… Don’t want to give the Swedes or Danish teams and competitive advantage. The finals is held in Oslo 05.mai, and hopefully we’ll do good enough to reach the world final in India in august. Last years Nordic finals were lots of fun, and the after party was great!
Imagine Cup is an annual competition for students held by Microsoft. The category our team is competing in is software design. You can read more about Imagine Cup over at TheSpoke.