Meet Your Competition Captains
Each Imagine Cup invitational is managed by a Captain who is chosen by Microsoft from industry experts. Captains are here to help you get the information you need to compete in the Imagine Cup. They monitor the forums, select helpful links and downloads, send competition announcements, and work closely with the judges to ensure the judging criteria are clear and fair.
You can meet your Captain by posting in the forums. Some Captains are former Imagine Cup champions, some are Microsoft employees, and some work for other technology companies or in the government. Want to learn more about your Captains and what inspires them about technology? Check out their biographies below!
  Chris Amaris - IT Challenge Chris Amaris is co-Captain of the IT Challenge Invitational. Chris is the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Convergent Computing and he has over 20 years experience consulting for Fortune 500 companies, leading companies in the technology selection, design, planning, and implementation of complex Information Technology projects. He specializes in database management, security, performance tuning, systems management, migration and messaging. A Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) with an Information System Security Architecture Professional (ISSAP) concentration, Certified Homeland Security (CHS III), Windows 2003 MCSE, Novell CNE, Banyan CBE, and a Certified Project Manager, Chris is an author, writer and technical editor for a number of IT books, including Network Security for Government and Corporate Executives, Windows 2000 Performance Tuning & Optimization, Maximum Windows 2000 Security, Windows Server 2003 Unleashed, and Exchange Server 2003 Unleashed. Chris Amaris presents on Operations Management, Messaging, Security, and Information Technology topics worldwide. Chris is also a member of the Computer Security Institute (CSI).
 Guillaume Belmas – Software Design Guillaume is Captain of the Software Design Invitational. A former Imagine Cup competitor, he was the project manager of the team that won the Software Design Category of Imagine Cup 2004. His team he created a smart home automation system based on the .NET Framework. Following his victory, Guillaume was promoted .NET Project Manager in his company. In the fall of 2005 he joined Exakis, a Microsoft Gold Partner company that specializes in .NET solutions, as a software architect. Since January 2007, Guillaume has co-managed the Software Architecture department at Exakis. A MVP C# since 2004, Guillaume actively participates to technical communities by giving numerous presentations on Visual Studio Team System. Since 2006, he’s participated as a judge in the Imagine Cup French Final. Guillaume has a message for all the Software Design competitors: Please, don’t throw me in the swimming pool again this year!
 Richard Clark - Project Hoshimi Programming Battle
Richard Clark is the first French MVP for MS .NET. Richard has a wife, two girls, two boys and two cats and lives in the southwest of France in the region known as "Pays Basque". Richard is the CEO of c2i SARL, a consulting company that specializes in new MS .NET technologies. He is expert in CodeFluent, a factory tool that enables users to model their business goals. Richard has been involved in the Imagine Cup from the beginning: he was one of the 10 judges of the first WW Finals in Barcelona, Spain and he also was a judge at the Finals in San Paolo, Brazil where the concept of Project Hoshimi was born. Each year Richard helps to manage and evolve this competition by adding new functionalities.
 Brian Conte - Algorithm
Brian Conte has been involved with Imagine Cup for four years and is currently the Captain of the Algorithm Invitational. He is President of Fast Track, which together with Mondo Robot created the Imagine Cup 2007 site. In his spare time, Brian likes to tinker with his house and teach programming to kids.
Learn more about the Algorithm competition on Channel 8:
 Scott Davis - Embedded Development
Scott Davis is Captain of the Embedded Development Invitational and is also the lead for Academic and Community activities for the Windows Embedded range of products. Scott has been with Microsoft for the past 5 years; all of which has been in Redmond. Before moving to the Windows Embedded team, Scott was the evidence lead within the Developer Evangelism Group. During that time, he led evidence for the SQL/VS/BizTalk and Vista/Office/Exchange launches, created the Remix Mix contest, and helped launch On10.net. In addition, he has directed a number of the corporate videos including the Windows Vista Excitement video that won an Emmy in 2007. Scott received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida and his MBA from the University of Washington.
Learn more about the Embedded Development invitational on Channel 8:
 Laura Foy– Short Film
Laura Foy is Captain of the Short Film Invitational. As the Senior Producer for Channel 10, Laura creates daily videos which include interviews, comedic parodies and self-created shows. Laura hails from New York and she attended New York University for Studio art and creative writing. After college she began creating videos for a cutting edge website called pseudo.com. There she wrote, produced, directed and starred in several of their online shows. She then moved on to Television where she hosted and produced a talk show for G4 (TechTV) for five years. Within that time she has also contributed her talents to several independent films and music videos.
Learn more about the Short Film Category:
 Craig Kitterman - Software Design Interoperability Award Craig Kitterman is a Senior Technical Evangelist in the Microsoft Interoperability Core Team. His primary focus is working with the global community to understand the real interoperability challenges that Microsoft customers face, and working with groups internal and external to the company to resolve these challenges. The end goal of his work is to ensure that the community understands how to engage with Microsoft, and how to get the information they need to make their heterogeneous solutions work better together. Craig holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Western Washington University and an M.B.A. from the University of Washington.
 Angus Logan - Software Design Windows Live Award Angus Logan is a Senior Technical Product Manager in the Windows Live Platform team in Redmond. Angus’s team is responsible for all technical marketing content ranging from conference presentations (MIX, TechEd) to online samples (Windows Live Quick Apps). Prior to being on the Windows Live Platform team, Angus was a Portals Technology Specialist with Microsoft Australia. Prior to that, Angus worked for several Microsoft partners, was an MVP, and co-authored a book on Microsoft Content Management Server. You can read Angus’s blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/angus_logan/.
 Jeffrey M. Greene - Photography This is Jeff Greene's second year as Captain of the Photography Invitational. Jeff is a Technical Evangelist with Microsoft’s Rich Media Group where he manages relationships with numerous professional photography organizations, digital photography workshops, and independent software enterprises. A veteran professional photographer and Adobe Photoshop user for over ten years, he is a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, the Professional Photographers of America, and Wedding & Portrait Photographers International. Jeff’s work has recently been featured in American Photo, Outdoor Photographer, PC Photo and Petersen’s Photographic magazines as well as in Tim Grey’s bestselling Photoshop books: Color Confidence and Photoshop CS2 Workflow. Jeff can be contacted with your questions and comments at: jgreene@microsoft.com.
 Rand Morimoto - IT Challenge Rand Morimoto, Ph.D., MVP, MCSE is co-Captain of the IT Challenge Invitational. A former Imagine Cup Champion in the IT Invitational, he has also served as and Head Judge at the WW Finals. Dr.Morimoto has been in the computer industry for over 30-yrs and was the head judge for the Imagine Cup IT Invitational in 2005 and in 2006. Dr.Morimoto is the lead author for Sams Publishing's "Unleashed" series of books that include worldwide best selling titles on Microsoft technologies spanning products including Windows 2003, Exchange 2007, SharePoint 2007, MOM 2005, ISA 2006, SQL 2005, and the like. Dr. Morimoto is the President of Convergent Computing, a San Francisco based IT consulting firm that provides technology consulting to major corporations such as eBay, Yahoo!, Intel, State Fund Insurance, the US government, and Levi Straus.
In his free time, Dr.Morimoto teaches entrepreneurship and business ethics in the Masters Business program at St.Mary's College of California, volunteers on the Board of Directors for the Chabot Space and Science Center astronomical museum and planetarium, and is one of four cyber-security advisors to the President of the United States.
  John Nordlinger - Game Development John Nordlinger is Captain of the Game Development Invitational. John is currently Program Manager at Microsoft Research. John got his start with computers earning money to pay for his Philosophy degree at Northeastern University (in between or during classes he played arcade games). He was then hired by Digital Equipment Corporation to troubleshoot and work on VAX/VMS and DEC OSF/1 as a Principal engineer (inside Digital, folks in engineering, including John, played Moriah on VAX/VMS).
Around the time Digital management thought adding posix to VAX/VMS justified the rename to OpenVMS, John coincidentally left to live in North Conway, NH, where he hiked, climbed ice and jumped started friend's cars for all but the three weeks of summer - he also played Tombraider and Pitfall during the long dark and cold nights. One muddy spring day in Northern NH, John found a copy of the new magazine Wired in a convenience store, next to the beer and hunting ammo, he decided to return to high tech and sent a mail to his friends at Oracle.
As a technical director for the Digital product line, John was hired by Oracle to work on 64-bit Oracle and then to launch the Oracle 64-bit VLM database (on Digital's Alpha) using SAS Insight on the frontend. The event, at the Equitable in NYC, was a huge success, largely due to the successful demos and Larry Ellison's stage presence. . Microsoft's SQL Server marketing group noticed that event, and invited John to do a similar (but much larger) event a year later, including the 64-bit SQL Server database, special supporting versions of WindowXP and SAS Insight, again on the front end. Also this time there were five other high end Back Office demos, (again in the Equitable building in NY) at Microsoft's now renown Scalability Day. There and elsewhere John, working with MSR's wizard Jim Gray, launched Terraserver; Thousand of Billions byte database and map of the US and other KGB interested regions. Despite early predictions of its demise, Terraserver remains a very popular web resource.
John had little time for games while in SQL Server, so he left Microsoft, and traveled in India, Thailand and Italy for a couple of years, eventually returning 2.5 years later to work in MSR University Relations. John now is responsible for influencing CS curriculum to inspire future CS students to use computer gaming themes and technologies. On the weekends or late at night, he sometimes plays Everquest2.
 Annuska Perkins - Accessible Technology
Annuska Perkins is the Captain of the Accessible Technology Award. She has worked on Accessibility at Microsoft since 2000, and is captivated with the potential of technology in people’s everyday lives and in business. Most recently, she helped design the Windows Vista Ease of Access Center, and just launched a Microsoft Accessibility Labs site to foster innovation in the accessibility field. Prior to becoming consumed with accessibility, she worked in MSN on local city guides. She became fascinated with User Interface Design while earning her Industrial Engineering degree from Seattle’s University of Washington. See a profile of Annuska’s work on: http://www.microsoft.com/enable/microsoft/perkins.aspx
 Surya Vanka - Interface Design
Surya Vanka is Captain of the Interface Design Invitational. A 9-year veteran of Microsoft, Surya is Manager of User Experience Excellence, and oversees best practices and engineering standards to create high-quality user experiences for Microsoft's customers. User experience innovation happens daily at Microsoft. But with more than 300 engineering teams and 600 user experience professionals spread across the world in groups from 2 to 40, it's up to Surya and his team to capture the best of these innovations and make them widely available. Surya's mission is put the users rather than technology at the center of the development process for all of Microsoft's products. Surya was professor of design at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and was a Fellow at the prestigious Center for Advanced Study. He is the author of two books on design, has lectured on design in over 20 countries, and published widely. His work has appeared in numerous publications including Form, ID Magazine, WIRED, Interactions, BBC Radio, National Public Radio, and Channel 15 Television. He is the recipient of several awards including best practice awards at Microsoft, an accessibility achievement award, Sloan Foundation Award and an IDSA best paper award.
Learn more about Surya and the Interface Design invitational:
|
|