Ooiks's Blog

In this post, I want to share my opinion and comment on Imagine Cup 2010 Malaysia on both the event and the competitors. I make no offense to anyone. If you think the way I’m writing is not suitable, do tell me so that I can be aware of it.

Opinion and comment on Imagine Cup event:

• Close presentation equal to close the learning door. I personally dislike close presentation especially those semi-final and finalist presentation. Since they had been selected as the best of the best, it is time for others to learn from them, how they present, how they sell their solution and etc. Close presentation stop the learning process from each others which is suppose to be the spirit of Imagine Cup. I truly hope this limitation can be remove in next Imagine Cup.
• Time and space limitation. I personally feel that round one is a lot tougher than round two because everyone is given 10 minute to present which include Q&A and further more the place is a public showcase where there are possibility get interrupted. Besides, it is not easy for all 5 judges to stare on a small laptop screen unless competitor did bring a projector or big LCD screen. I can said round one did kill a lot of competitor’s dream.

Opinion and comment on  competitors:

• Make it short and simple during the showcase. Try to give a simple explanation and demo when visitor visit your booth and not a full length presentation. Some competitors give me a 20 minutes presentation with power point slide when I visited their booth which is too much (but I appropriate it). Imagine there are so many visitor there and each of them you given them 20 minutes of presentation… Make a short and simple explanation for the visitor to let them know your solution main concept will be enough. If they want more, they will ask.
• Lack of public presentation skill. I can see some competitors start to get panic to present in front of a cloud of people. They even forget their script or strategies they had planned. Stay clam, take a deep breath. Practice make perfect, don’t remember your script last minute.
• Targeting the wrong goal. I did mention this in my last post about presentation and slide that by targeting the wrong goal, you are targeting to fall. Take a close look on the goal’s detail, for example the education. The main primary problem is many children can’t even complete their primary school education due to lack of money. How they can effort to own a PC by then? If your solution cannot answer this question, that’s mean your solution are not solving this problem or targeting this goal correctly. Reviews the goal detail and add required feature so that your solution can fit into the goal you targeting more correctly.
• Don’t be greedy by targeting all 8 goals. I did see some solution trying to target 8 goals all at once using their one single solution, but I’m going to said that this is not going to work. There doesn’t exist a silver bullet that can kill every monster, this apply to software solution as well. As judge’s point of view, they are seeking a solution that can solve a single problem completely or as much as possible compare with solve each problem a little bit.
• Interface design is very important. Some might argue having a great idea is better than having a great GUI design, but would you rather use a software which have a poor GUI design which you can’t even know where is the feature you looking for than having a great GUI design which you can find what you need with no help? You have the answer in yourself. That is the reason why we have Human Computer Interaction major in computer study field. Don’t forget that there are 10% point allocated for usability.
• Where is your research? Some competitors did not do their homework. Where are the number of target users? Mobile penetration rate? Internet penetration rate? Usability study? Research is the only way to convince the judges how practical your solution is. Don’t assume what user think of, this is not your school assignment or project, the judges need a value / a number that they can trust on. A picture with a few people looking at the laptop is not enough.
• This is your competition not your mentor’s competition. I can see some mentor is eager to help their student from presentation, booth declaration, question and answer,  even helping editing the slide. This is too much. This is suppose to be your competition and not your mentor’s competition, what your mentor provide is advise, you can choose to listen or not to. Don’t let the advice become command.
• Don’t talk like a loser! Imagine cup’s slogan: “You win, we all win”. You might have opinion or comment on other’s winning solution, but don’t let it be the wall that block your learning way. Competitors should learn from each other and not firing on each other after the event end. Yes, I understand that the feeling of losing doesn’t taste good especially if you think your solution is better than others yet lose to them. But try to ask yourself what went wrong instead of pointing your finger on others. That is the way of learning. “If you win you need not to explain… But if you lose you should not be there to explain.” – by Adolph Hitler.

I guess thats for all now. Will add more if I remember. Phew. This is a long list too.

by Ooi Keng Siang

Imagine Cup 2010 Malaysia had come to an end. Team HDC from APIIT will be presenting Malaysia in the worldwide final at Poland. This year, APIIT had hug away the most prizes and I can see team from UMP is doing a great job this year. As usual USM is still one of the big players in Imagine Cup Malaysia. It is very interesting to see more and more students and universities are stepping up for challenge compare with last year.

Champion: Team HDC (APIIT) – Project Apple

First-runner Up: Celestial (USM) – Map Integrated Disaster Sharing Portal (MiDS)

Second-runner Up: MediaLab Studio (UMP) – ECO-Bumi

The Best Presentation Award: Team HDC (APIIT) – Project Apple

The Coolest Application Award: Celestial (USM) – Map Integrated Disaster Sharing Portal (MiDS)

Multi-point Award: Cyber Knight (APIIT) – Global Knowledge Reactor

The Most Promising Award: Cyber MarksMan (UPNM) – Search And Rescue Tactical Management System  (SARTaMS)

Consolation prizes:

Beginner (UTarc) – Green Reconnect

Cyber MarksMan (UPNM) – Search And Rescue Tactical Management System  (SARTaMS)

Hello World (UPM) – SAFER

Marshmellow (USM) – Traveler Health Awareness Tracker

Too bad I didn’t get the chances to visit Team HDC’s booth during the showcase, thus missing the chances to watch their full live demo of their system. From the stage presentation, I can see Project Apple created by Team HDC is targeting to improve health and wellbeing by promoting good eating habits as they found out those bad eating habits is the main cause of most diseases. I like the clean interface they design, smooth and confident presentation. The coolest part is, they even integrated bar code scanning through camera to get more detail about nutrition in the fruit.

Celestial created Map Integrated Disaster Sharing Portal (MiDS) to provide a platform to alert public on disasters happening, share information and solve the problem through system community. The application utilized the deep zoom technology in Silverlight Bing Map which makes the application look very cool. The simple and easy to understand interface add another plus point for this team.

MediaLab Studio created Eco-Bumi, a video game that will educate gamers about eco-system preservation. Although is just a merely 2D game, but they use manga style of drawing which make the game look very interesting. The team even show me their backend coding during my visit to the booth, and I’m impressed by them.

I had a few comment on this Imagine Cup event and for the competitor as well, but I’ not too tired to list it out. I guess I will do it next time. Congratulation to all winner again and for those who did not grab away any prizes, don’t give up you had come so far, so please don’t stop at here.

by Ooi Keng Siang

Imagine Cup 2010 Malaysia 2010 day two start today! Every competitor is busy preparing their presentation since the very early morning. I can see some “panda” busy preparing over night with a very little sleep only.

There is a public showcase of each team’s solution to the public and as well as to the judges in the morning. I can see a few very interesting and promising projects. I had been spending the whole morning time to visit as many booths as I can to get to know more about each project, but I only manage to visit 16 booths out of 29 booths. I guess I don’t have that time to blog each and every project out at here now with my battery is running low now.

The top 7 teams that made it to the final round had announced. They are Beginner (Tarc), Celestial (USM), Cyber Marksman (UPNM), Hello World (UPM), Marshmellow (USM), Medialab Studio (UMP) and Team HDC (APIIT). Congratulation to all of them. Now all 7 teams are having their hard time presenting their solution to the judges, but too bad the section is close and private which I couldn’t get to see their live action.

There are a grand dinner later on tonight which the top 3 team will presenting on the stage. I guess this is the exciting time to see their presentation and get to know the final result of which team represent Malaysia going to the Poland. Stay tune to my twitter to the latest update.

by Ooi Keng Siang