Question:
Team Members Full Names:
Answer:
Bruno França dos Reis
Roberto Sonnino
Question:
Mentor:
Answer:
Eduardo Sonnino
Question:
Title of Project:
Answer:
KnoWorld
Question:
Project Overview:
Answer:
KnoWorld is a Popfly Block set that lets you mix world indicator data from Gapminder with events from many sources in different visualizations to analyze causes and consequences of the world’s problems!
KnoWorld allows you to compare indicators visually and create new conclusions, empowering home users and teachers with easily-accessible world data and creating new visualization possibilities!
Question:
Technology/Software Used:
Answer:
- Popfly
- Simile Timeplot
- Google Chart API
- Javascript, HTML, CSS
Question:
Inspiration: What inspired your team to enter the Microsoft Imagine Cup and why did you choose the MashUp competition?
Answer:
In our team, one member and the mentor had already experienced the Imagine Cup World Finals and, excited by the idea of the finals in Egypt, we decided to build a team. We chose the MashUp competition because we saw it as a great opportunity to innovate in new medias in order to change our world. Besides, we saw Popfly as a simple yet powerful platform to express our ideas through a user-friendly interface.
Question:
Team History: How did your team meet?
Answer:
Eduardo and Roberto, as brothers, have been working together in Imagine Cup projects since 2005. After Roberto went to France in a student exchange program he met Bruno, a student in the same program who shared his interests, and they quickly became friends and started working together.
Question:
Team Experience: What experience did your team have with MashUp before competing in the Imagine Cup?
Answer:
Befor the competition, one of the members of the team had already played a little bit with Popfly, but none of them had extensive experience with it. However, both members were profficient in the basic technologies needed to build this project.
Question:
Highlights: What has been the best part of the Imagine Cup competition to date?
Answer:
Until now, the best part of the competition was raising adoption to our project and receiving praise by many people and even by teachers who perceived its potential.
Question:
Inspiration: How did your team come up with your submission? Include which Millennium Development Goal inspired your solution.
Answer:
After lots of brainstorming, we saw in Popfly a simple interface that could allow everyone to mashup world indicators that relate to all 8 MDGs and analyze them in a new way. Once we had found the data sources and came up with some visualization ideas, we found out it had even more potential, especially in education.
Question:
Challenges: What personal or technological challenges did your team face while developing your submission?
Answer:
Besides the physical distance between the team and its mentor (almost 10000 km), we had some difficulties with the lack of documentation in Popfly and some browser bugs. Also, we saw how hard it is to make an effective adoption campaign for a project.
Question:
Future Plans: What does your team plan on doing after the Worldwide Finals in Cairo, Egypt? Do you plan to use your project to launch a new business?
Answer:
After the competition, we plan to continue working in our project, to spread it and to raise adoption particularly among teachers. While the project is not very business-centric, we believe it creates great opportunities to empower educators and build awareness on the world's issues.
Question:
Links to more information (i.e. website, blog):
Answer:
http://virtualdreams.com.br/blog/2009/04/knoworld-know-your-world-to-transform-it/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SQPeq9_7c4&fmt=22