Regional Imagine Cup final 2009 - Russia

The Russian Imagine Cup Finals took place in Moscow on April 18th, at the Microsoft Innovation Center at the Higher School of Economics. Around 300 students attended the event, which was more than expected. Despite the low budget available for the finals, we managed to make this a truly remarkable event for students – with prize draws, an XBox game zone, on-site contests, Pepsi party, etc.. Moreover, it was the first technology event in Russia to utilize a live twitter stream on stage and twitter voting, which created unique atmosphere of involvement and added a lot of interactivity to the event.

Imagine Cup 2009 Russia Highlights:

• 6 Regional Quarter-Finals held in Moscow, St.Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Tomsk, Chelyabinsk, Taganrog
• The most regional Imagine Cup contests ever, with projects from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok (11 time zones covered)!
• Local competitions on Online Games, Mashups and Web Projects (http://online.imaginecup.ru)
• About 5000 registrations, 50+ SDI teams throughout Russia
• Competition supported by Information & Computer Technologies Industry Association (APKIT), Intel, Informika (State Institute of Information Technologies and Telecommunications) and TEKAMA (organizers of SECR’09, largest Software Engineering conference in Russia).
• The winners of the Imagine Cup get free attendance to SECR’09 software engineering conference ($400 value), with an opportunity to present their projects there

Imagine Cup Russian Finals Highlights:

• 7 teams from different parts of Russia
• About 300 visitors at the event!
• Coverage of the event by federal TV channel Vesti24, resulting in the top story (still subject to approval) – you can watch the video online
• 600 twitter posts about the event (with #imcup hashtag) in 2 days
• Opening ceremony with Dmitry Khalin (Russia DPE Director) and Nick Komlev (Director of AP KIT Association)
• Roundtable for Young Entrepreneurs, featuring 3 dynamic startup companies that shared their experience on starting a business in IT
• On-Site Contests, Imagine Cup Tatoo, Xbox zone, Prize Draws, Channel8 Interview Crew, etc.Roundtable for Young Entrepreneurs, featuring 3 dynamic startup companies that shared their experience on starting a business in IT

The winners:

• 1st place team from Nizhny Novgorod State University with the project “ViVa” – the system of detection and prevention of disease epidemics, as well as personal health monitoring system. Their presentation was by far the most spectacular, and the application they were presenting was well-designed using latest Microsoft technologies (including appealing WPF interface, Azure Services, etc.)!
  Apart from a prize from Microsoft, the team was awarded the silver medal from Informika institute – a very prestigious award that is given to the most prominent student teams in Russia.
• 2nd place went to the most eastern team from Vladivostok with mobiEcash project – the system of micro-payments using the new form of electronic money, which, similarly to ordinary money, have a value and do not merely act as payment orders.
• 3rd place was awarded to the team from Volgograd State Technical University, who presented personal life saver system Red Alert.
• Special Entrepreneurship prize from Intel was given to the team from the Russian State University named after I.Kant (Kaliningrad), who presented the system of wireless multi-touch control Sense.
• It is interesting to note that this year we had purely female team from Chelyabinsk present on the Russian Finals. The team called Women’s Logic presented WPF-based game that should teach children in a very positive way. Incorporating important principles of children learning from psychology, hand-made drawing with Russian national characters, as well as modern technology such as machine translation - the game presents really attractive alternative to the modern computer games.

To conclude: this year the Imagine Cup in Russia was the most regional ever, the whole of Russia was represented (from the most western point – Kaliningrad – the most eastern one, Vladivostok). It is also the first time in the history of the Imagine Cup in Russia that teams from outside Moscow took all the winning places. Finally, it was the first time that purely female team appeared in the Imagine Cup Russian Finals.

Dmitry Khalin (DPE Lead): “We are very pleased to see how the Imagine Cup is expanding in Russia, bringing students from all over the country to the competition. This year all 11 time zones were represented in the finals, from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, and the level of innovation and creativity was very high. We are proud that the Imagine Cup can help student teams to express themselves, become more visible, and put their ideas forward and to build a successful career – because those teams will largely contribute to the new innovative economy”