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!