University of Colombo Hosts Microsoft Imagine Cup 2013 National Competition

Imagine Cup 2013, Sri Lanka’s premier student technology competition, will take place at the main auditorium of the UCSC (University of Colombo School of Computing)on the 10thof April. This year UCSC is the co-host of Imagine Cup Sri Lanka Finals grand event..

The winner of the competition will take part in the Microsoft Global Imagine Cup competition, where innovative students from across the world come to a common platform to showcase their creativity by using the power of technology to build path-breaking IT solutions.

This year, over 700 participants from state universities and private education institutions in Sri Lanka have participated in the local competition. At the final phase, which is to be held on10th April, 14 teams will compete, aiming to win the respective categories and also to enter into the worldwide finals which will be held in St. Petersburg, Russia.

This year the competition has taken on a new dimension, allowing students to compete under 3 different categories namely, World Citizenship, Innovation and Games. This provides students the opportunity to become more innovative in their thinking and allow different talents the opportunity to shine at the competition.

Of the 14 teams selected for the national competition, two will compete under the games category, six under World Citizenship and six under Innovation. Three categories will be judged by three different panels of judges who have experience and expertise in the industry.

The Innovation category will honor the most creative, groundbreaking or inspired software application. The judging parameters for the “Innovation Category” will be innovation, impact and execution.

The Citizenship category will honor the software application with the greatest potential to make a positive contribution to the betterment of humanity, with judging parameters involving impact, feasibility and execution.

The Games category will honor the best game with commercial viability. This category will be judged based on fun, execution, innovation and business viability.

Imagine Cup, which was first introduced to Sri Lanka in 2005 has now become the country’s premier IT competition, in the tertiary education sector. Garnering much enthusiasm from local universities and private higher education institutions, the competition provides students the opportunity to launch their careers, take their initial steps to becoming entrepreneurs and gain valuable information and experience in cross cultural collaboration. Microsoft also offers up-to-the-minute technology to Sri Lankan students to hone their skills to be part of this competition, which has greatly improved the quality of projects presented by local teams each year.

The competition also allows students to develop not only their technological skills but also soft skills such as leadership, teamwork, critical thinking and tenacity. Imagine Cup is the only IT competition of its kind organized by a private sector organization to reach such national proportions.

Commenting on the national competition, Wellington Perera, Director – Developer Platform Evangelism of Microsoft Sri Lanka said the competition has come a long way since inception.

“We have been overwhelmed by the amount of entries we received and enthusiasm which was displayed, not only by the students but also by the respective institutes who supported and backed this competition immensely. We hope that that the winning team, which will represent Sri Lanka in St Petersburg, will be able to win the global competition as well- displaying the true spirit of Sri Lanka. All these participants are out-of-the-box thinkers and we need to make sure young people – regardless of their socio-economic background – have the opportunity to make their great ideas a reality. This is the idea behind Imagine Cup,” he said.

The International Imagine Cup Competition also offers a competitive grants program for all world finalist teams. Winners of the grant will be determined based on several criteria at the global competition. Each team who wins the grant will receive a cash grant depending on the team’s business plan and project scope.  In addition to that, they will also receive software to support the implementation of their solution along with mentorship by a Microsoft representative in the winner’s country or region.