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Within the local competition's activities, 63 teams from 11 different universities entered the software design contest; the competition's most famous category. The competing teams submitted various projects that provide innovative technological solutions to life's toughest issues.
The evaluation committee - that includes experts from the MCIT, Suzanne Mubarak's international peace movement, Microsoft Egypt and Microsoft's Cairo innovation center - reviewed and evaluated the submitted projects in accordance with the global finals' terms and conditions.
This year, the competing projects went through three different stages, amid unprecedented fierce competition, before selecting the team that will represent Egypt at the global finals, which will be revealed during the conference.
Also, 12 Egyptian teams participated at the embedded development contest and submitted different projects that address many of today's real problems as controlling traffic jams, improving the quality of health services, reducing energy consumption, eliminating poverty and removing mines.
On the 20th of last March, the teams that successfully passed to the contest's second round were announced and received and E-box 4300 embedded platform device to upload and represent their applications to the final evaluation committee.
"Now in its seventh year and bringing together more than 300 students from more than 100 countries, the Imagine Cup contest has become a global event," said Karim Ramadan, the General Manager for Microsoft Egypt.
"With the theme 'Imagine a world where technology helps solving the toughest problems facing us today', this year's contest is paid special attention since Egypt will host the global finals. This urged Microsoft as well as other governmental and non governmental organizations to do their best in order to ensure the success of such a huge event,"
added Ramadan.
Ahmed Adel, the business developers director at Microsoft Egypt, assured that although the race to host the Imagine Cup 2009 finals was competitive, as Egypt competed with many countries distinguished in the ICT field, yet Egypt's proposal was welcomed.
Adel clarified that to achieve the bets results amid the fierce competition between all the participating teams worldwide, Microsoft provided the Egyptian participants with a number of free online programming and training facilities.
Microsoft also organized a number of training sessions for the students to help them develop their skills within the contest's categories and to increase their competitiveness. Ahmed also revealed that this year witnesses a historical participation from the Egyptian students as 9,000 students applied for the contest.
"Increasing the Egyptian youths' ICT awareness and providing them with the best opportunities in this field, are among the movement's main objectives. Accordingly, the movement strongly supported Egypt's proposal to host the Imagine Cup global finals and Mrs. Mubarak's direct support strongly aided Cairo in hosting the finals,"
said Ms. Nagwa Shouieb, General Manager of Suzanne Mubarak's International Peace Movement. "Moreover, the movement together with Microsoft and the MCIT arranged many promotional and educational activities among the universities' students to ensure that Egypt achieves the best results," added Shouieb.
Acting out of their eagerness to make this event a successful one, many governmental and private organizations pay special attention to this year's tournament. As a matter of fact, the promotional planning for the contest started as early as October and November 2008 when a group of representatives from Microsoft, the MCIT and Suzanne Mubarak's movement visited seven of the major Egyptian universities to identify the universities' presidents and faculties' deans with the importance of the contest and encourage students to participate in it.
Under the auspices of Mrs. Mubarak and during her attendance, the second annual cyber peace initiative conference was held last February. Being a key partner in this initiative, Microsoft's role was highlighted during the conference.
Innovation is one of the initiative's main pillars and since the Imagine Cup competition simply stands for innovation, Karim Ramadan - Microsoft Egypt General Manager- provided the conference attendees with a detailed presentation about it, the thing which was quite interesting for Egypt's First Lady and the attendees.
Moreover, a promotional campaign, supported by Microsoft, the MCIT, Suzanne Mubarak's movement, the Ministry of Higher Education, LinkdotNet and Geely cars, was launched allover Egypt to promote for the contest and encourage students to participate at it.
The campaign aimed at explaining the contest's nine categories, encouraging students to participate and contribute with innovative ideas to solve the world's hardest challenges and at the meantime get a chance to win a car.
Ms. Nevine Tawfik, Manager of the Cyber Peace Initiative said: "the imagine cup competition finals represent a golden opportunity for the ICT sector of the hosting country, thus the MCIT is keen on supporting all the tournament's related activities starting from officially supporting the proposal and moving all the way to supporting the ongoing events and activities to ensure the successful organizing of the event." She added
"The selection of Egypt to host the global finals highlights the international recognition of the huge development Egypt is achieving in the ICT industry, and the finals represent a perfect opportunity for the Egyptian students and companies to network and interact with the international community in this domain, the thing which will positively affect the whole industry."
Posted by Rima Ali Al Mashni
