In Bangladesh this the very first time we organized Imagine Cup Software Design at national level. We started the journey by doing the first Imagine Cup boot camp in North South University in December 2010. Then we went to 10 different universities across the country to educate the students on Imagine Cup through boot camps.
MSPs, MVPs helped us in the boot camps time to time and introduced many latest technologies/industry standards to the students. Imagine Cup got very good attention from the students of different universities; in terms of registration numbers, Bangladesh became 9th worldwide and 2nd in Asia Pacific. The deadline for project submission was 20 February 2011. 121 projects were submitted from 13 different universities under different categories, which is huge response as a 1st time launch in Bangladesh. After all procedure of this competition Imagine cup Bangladesh choose 10 projects that are fighting for local championship.
To make general people aware of Imagine cup, we participated in BASIS SoftExpo 2011 in February & inspired visitors to register on our portal. We received fantastic response! Approximately 1000 students registered themselves IC portal from that location. MSPs were there round the clock to assist the visitors with the registration process and give them information and background in Imagine Cup.
We also arranged a Mega Boot Camp where we invited all the teams and discuss more on how they can improve and what may help them to represent their solution and get good marks from the judges. MVPs, ISV leaders gave very nice guideline to the participants.
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Country Manager Mr. Feroz Mahmud and Hon'ble State Minister Architect Yeafesh Osman is giving their welcome speech
On this connection a prize giving ceremony has held in Bangabandhu International conference Center on 10th May, 2011. Architect Yeafesh Osman, Hon'ble State Minister, Ministry of Science and Information & Communication Technology, Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh was present on that occasion as chief guest. The country manager of Microsoft Bangladesh Feroz Mahmud was also present there.
Minister says, “It’s my humblest honor that Microsoft gave me the opportunity to meet the highest talents of our county who took the challenge to solve global problems. Today Bangladesh is proud of them and grateful to Microsoft for opening doors of such opportunity. I believe our children will do good in the international round too. Without such opportunity from the corporate it’s hard to hone local talents. We expect other corporates will start such culture and our kids roar like a tiger in international IT industry.”
Teams and Projects
2nd Runner Up
Team: littleBrains, Project: X-Able
littleBrains team members are receiving their gift from Hon'ble State Minister, Architect Yeafesh Osman
and Microsoft Bangladesh Country Manager, Feroz Mahmud
This is what littleBrais says about their project: We are aiming to improve the quality of life of those humans who have disabilities. These people are unable to communicate with the real world and somehow they live in a disconnected world. Imagine Cup theme enforces to think about our responsibilities for the society for the development, empowerment regarding mental, physical health. Our target is to omitting the communication gap of these people and enabling them to connect them with the real world with their limited abilities. Let’s improvise the living quality of those people who have disabilities using technology.
We are designed a Windows 7 Desktop Application X-Able based on Assistive Technology. It manages to connect these people who are suffering from different disabilities. Enable these people to communicate with the world with their limited abilities. Limited abilities like voice command face movement or even eye movement. X-Able will acquire different inputs for different perspective and will perform appropriate actions.
By Using X-Able these people can accomplish different activities like talking, communicating, chatting, alarming with others etc. This application enables people to perform tasks that they were unable to accomplish, or had great difficulty accomplishing. We are also developing this application with embedded features that makes it more worth, more usable, meaningful to the corresponding users.
1st Runner Up
Team: SuperNova, Project: thirdHand
SuperNova team members are receiving their gift from Hon'ble State Minister, Architect Yeafesh Osman
and Microsoft Bangladesh Country Manager, Feroz Mahmud
thirdHand, an unique software to help the communication between the physically disabled persons to the computer. thirdHand is very easy to use. It reduces the cost of the alternative input devices for the disabled.
This is what SuperNova says about their project: Main objective of our software is to reduce cost of the alternative input devices for disabled. The device for using our software includes a push switch and two LEDs. Our software will observe the movement of LEDs through a web cam and will act as an alternative input (Mouse & Keyboard) device. Physically disabled persons can easily operate this device and software where the available systems are very costly. Our software will use only a web cam and the device which can be constructed by $0.5 only. This may be appropriate for the third world countries like Bangladesh.
Champion
Team: Team Rapture, Project ThirdEye
Team Rapture team members are receiving their gift from Hon'ble State Minister, Architect Yeafesh Osman,
Microsoft Bangladesh Country Manager, Feroz Mahmud and Telerik Product Manager, Mehfuz Hossain
In today’s world, smartphones and cloud computing blessed all of us with enormous power and we are thankful to this wonderful advancement of technology. But have we ever wondered if visually impaired people can take advantage of these technologies like we do? So far, the answer is “No, they can’t”. Therefore, we thought of making this smartphone device an eye for those people. We call it the ‘ThirdEye’. With ‘ThirdEye’, we will help them. We will help them to be free.
This is what Team Rapture says about their project: According to WHO, about 314 million people are vision impaired worldwide, 45 million of them are blind. The females are at more risk. About 87% impaired are in the developing countries. Therefore, a big number of the talented and potential people in the developing countries cannot move from one place to another at ease. They are also unable to make use of the latest technologies and the information superhighway, which keeps them from contributing to the economic development. Enabling them to communicate seamlessly and use the blessings of technology, we can take a giant step towards ending hunger and poverty.
Our solution ‘ThirdEye’ is a smartphone application which comes with:
• Camera helps vision impaired people with voice and image processing to assist walking, describe surroundings
• When put on a spot or towards a direction, the impaired hears details about it.
• Special UI comes with vibration and speech feedback.
• OCR to describe any text.
• Impaired gets all common internet services.
• Voice command for storing favorite route/spot and UI navigation.
• Basic phone operations (calls, SMS)
• Braille keypad for input.
• Application server for guided walk, requesting help from authenticated persons
On Media/Press
All the major TV Channels did news on the National Grand Finale event. I must mention some of their names- Ekushey TV, Shomoy News, ATN News, Boishakhi TV, Desh TV, Channel i.
Ekushey TV is working on a 26 minute program on Imagine Cup, they will focus on the history, background of Imagine Cup WW and top 3 teams initiative and plan with their projects.
ABC Radio, Radio Aamar did live interview of the minister, country manager and champion on their news.
Most of the national daily newspapers published news on the event and 2 top circulated newspapers are published a full page coverage of the contest and interview of the top 3 team on the next weekend issue.
S2B
During the judgment session Ashraful Alam Joy, Chief Architect, DEsme Inc. mentioned “I’m hiring developers and seeing codes since last 9 years. These boys may have small problem but I did not expect this quality output from students of this age. DEsme’s doors are always open for them and they are invited to join any time they want.
Microsoft Imagine Cup 2011 - Software Design Bangladesh is a huge success. Architect Yeafesh Osman, Hon'ble State Minister, Ministry of Science and Information & Communication Technology, Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh appreciated Microsoft’s initiative for developing the students and their skills and wishes that Microsoft will continue the same in future.
Article compiled from many sources.