Imagine Cup 2011 Worldwide Final – Day 6 – Awards Ceremony

Today is the final day of Imagine Cup 2011 at New York. All competitions were already over but there are still lot of activities waiting for the competitors today such as student learning sessions, student showcase, award ceremony and farewell party! Which team will bring home the ultimate golden trophy and golden belt? We shall found that out today.

Today we have a lot of interesting learning sessions for the competitors especially for those who is going to graduate anytime soon. For example, Take Your Imagine Cup Experiences to the Next Level, What it Takes to be a Researcher, Insider Tips for Excelling in Technical Interviews and etc. Each learning sessions will be giving out a XBox to a lucky student who attend the session. For those students who yet to grab a XBox, today will be their last chance to grab a XBox in one of the learning sessions on the morning.

On the afternoon, we are moving from the hotel to Lincoln Center for the Student Showcase and World Festival Awards Ceremony. Student Showcase is where student showcase their project and exchange ideas with other students, judges and guests. All competitors are very initiative to share their solution to everyone while learning the idea from other competitors at the same time. Learning from each other, that is the way how the competitors improve continuously every year.

Now the most exciting and climax of Imagine Cup, the Awards Ceremony. Just like Olympic, each team is proud of the country they represent by holding the country flag on the stage. All competitors are very excited in this ceremony even before the ceremony start. Flying their own country flag and shouting for they own country name are every corner of in the hall. This year we have a very impact opening of award ceremony with 3 big screen and a performer telling the world toughest problem that are waiting to be solve. Yes, there are still many problems awaiting for the students to solve no matter what is the outcome of this competition.

We have some very interesting guests this years on the awards ceremony such as Michael R. Bloomberg (Mayor of NYC) welcoming every one of us to New York City. This is also the first time ever for Microsoft to invite Eva Longoria at Imagine Cup and she is excited to talking about Imagine Cup project created by the student on how they can help on huge disaster. Wait, we even got the Master Chief from Halo game appear out of sudden to deliver the result of Game Design and have a big picture with Game Design winner. Cool!

Microsoft continue to throw more surprise to competitors during the award ceremony to make the excitement go on and on. Walid Abu-Hadba (VP of Developer & Platform Microsoft) announced that each first place winner will get an invitation to /*build*/ conference and each finalist competitors will get a Windows Phone 7 with Mango update. While S. Somasegar (Senior Vice President, Developer Division of Microsoft) announced a 3 million USD grants open for Imagine Cup participations to apply. No matter if the competitor had won any prize tonight or not, they all are already the winner with Microsoft Kinect (announced on Day 1) and Windows Phone 7.5.

Enough of the talk, the result of Imagine Cup 2011 New York are…

Software Design Winning Team

First Place: Team Hermes (Ireland)
Second Place: Team Note Taker (United States)
Third Place: Oasys Team (Jordan)

Embedded Development Winning Teams

First Place: NTHUCS (Taiwan)
Second Place: Harmonicare (China)
Third Place: Endeavour_Design (Romania)

Game Design (Windows/XBox) Winning Teams

First Place: Signum Games (Brazil)
Second Place: JubJub (Thailand)
Third Place: WickedTeam (Czech Republic)

Game Design (Web) Winning Teams

First Place: Cellardoor (Poland)
Second Place: Signum Fidei (Philippines)
Third Place: Quegee Team (Slovakia)

Game Design (Mobile) Winning Teams

First Place: Geekologic (France)
Second Place: Close World Mobile (France)
Third Place: Team Dragon (United States)

Digital Media Winning Teams

First Place: M.N.A. (Romania)
Second Place: Brothers Forever (Oman)
Third Place: Cottoncandy (Taiwan)

Windows Phone 7 Winning Teams

First Place: HOMERUN (Korea)
Second Place: Zipi Zigi (Korea)
Third Place: The LifeLens Project (United States)

IT Challenge Winning Individuals

First Place: Jean-Sebastien Duchene (France)
Second Place: Blazej Matuszyk (Poland)
Third Place: Yunheng Mong (Singapore)

Interoperability Challenge Winning Teams

First Place: alaniarides (Greece)
Second Place: Bells Team (Brazil)
Third Place: DemosceneSpirit (Poland)

Orchard Challenge Winning Teams

First Place: MP Brun (Denmark)
Second Place: Virtual Dreams – Orchard (Brazil)
Third Place: Zveen Zveen Team (Serbia)

Windows 7 Touch Challenge Winning Teams

First Place: India Rose (France)
Second Place: _dreambender_ (Indonesia)
Third Place: IUVO (Japan)

2011 People’s Choice Award Winning Team

Team Rapture (Bangladesh)

Although Imagine Cup 2011 had officially ended but this should not be the end of the journey for the competitor but the this should be the beginning of their journey to create a better world. This should not be end of the story for those who can’t made it into the final, it should be just end of a chapter and a new chapter should beginning for Imagine Cup 2012. With the Imagine Cup flag passing ceremony, Gerard Seeber (Deputy Consul General & Senior Trade and Investment Commissioner Austrade) and Pip Marlow (Managing Director of Microsoft Australia) officially announce Imagine Cup 2012 will be at Australia

After the awards ceremony, all competitor are having the farewell party back at hotel. Time to throw everything about competition behind of the mind and dance! No alcoholic drink for those who under 21! The Microsoft Student Partners Social Media Team having our farewell party together with the competitors too as 25 of us will be depart and go back to our own country after that. Sorry pal, we are there to party so no photo at party for you all to see! Party go on until 2 in the morning.

I’m, gone miss all the competitors from around the world especially those team I’m keeping in charge, the 24 MSPs in Social Media Team that we had work out together every day and night through out the event, our team lead Michelle Fleming who taking good care of us, Ali, Milo and many more who I can’t mention them all here. As I said, this should not be a good bye, so let’s kick start the Imagine Cup 2012 at Australia then! Hope to see you all next year!