Imagine Cup
Welcome to the Imagine Cup Software Design Competition for Trinidad and Tobago.
This competition is open to all students in the Caribbean and Central America region. For more information on eligibility requirements, see the competition rules.
Regional finals will be held on 05/17/2008.
Valid entries must follow adhere to the following guidelines:
• Teams of up to 4 individuals
• 1 mentor strongly suggested
• Team members may come from different schools and countries
• Theme: Imagine a world where “technology enables a sustainable environment”
• Approximately 50 Teams will advance to the worldwide finals in France
• Presentations and documentation at the worldwide finals must be in English, first and second rounds are subject to language requirement set by the Microsoft subsidiary you compete within.
Required Elements
• Self created Web service
• Designed on .NET Framework 2.0, 3.0 or 3.5
• Use of Visual Studio family (Express, Standard, or Team System) for development
Deliverables
• Application executables and readme files
• Project specification, no more than 5 pages
• One page executive summary
• Oral presentation – 45 minutes and 15 minutes for judges questions
• Visual representation of system architecture
Calendar
• Sep 1 – Registration Opens
• Jan 31 – Final date to send your project to (iccca@microsoft.com)
• Feb 8 – Semi Finalist Winners Announced
• May 10 -- Connectivity Test
• May 15 – Semi Finalist Presentation
• May 16 -- Semi Finalist Presentation
• May 17 – CCA Winner Announced
• May 18 – Teams Can send questions to judges
• May 23 -- Judges answer questions to teams
• Jun 1 -- CCA Winners’ Presentation to press
• Jun 29 -- Deliver Awards to Semi Finalist
• Jul 1-31 -- Intensive preparation for the Winner Team
• Aug 5-10 – CCA Winners’ Trip to France
Judging Elements
• 15% Problem Definition - How difficult is the problem being addressed? How well is it being defined?
• 60% Design - Equal consideration will be given to:
• Innovation – applications that approach a new problem, or look at an old problem in a new way.
• Impact - applications that either impact a large number of people very broadly, or impact a smaller number of people very deeply.
• Effectiveness – to what degree the application actually solves the problem in question.
• User Experience - To what degree are the HCI (Human Computer Interfaces) intuitive, ergonomic and user friendly?
• 15% Development - The judges will be looking for elegant system architectures that break the problem down into logical chunks and modules. Other factors considered are:
• Development prospect: Is the project technically open for evolution?
• System intelligence: Does the application leverage the presence of fresh and updated data?
• 10% Presentation- The judges will be looking for oral presentations that provide background and context to the project, explain why the problem is an interesting one, highlight how the system works, and include an insightful demonstration. Teams will also be evaluated on their ability to take questions from the judging panel.
Scoring System
• A simple numerical scoring system will be used. Each judging element will be given a score of 1-10 and weighted according to the percentages given in the judging element descriptions.
Requirements to Reach Worldwide Finals
• Participants must have built and presented a running software application that won a national or regional level competition in a country or region that is sponsoring a winning team for the worldwide Imagine Cup finals.
Ready to upload your entry? Click the button below.