Student Media at the Imagine Cup
One of the things that is special about this year’s Imagine Cup finals is the student social media team. The Microsoft Imagine Cup team set out to find the Microsoft Student Partners from around the world who are best suited to reporting the events from the student point of view using social media. These students are blogging, Twittering (Follow their hash tag #MSPSMT), taking pictures, posting things to Facebook and Flickr, and generally sharing their experiences and information about the various teams via social media. They are everywhere in their bright yellow t-shirts and conference IDs listing them as Press. And they are doing a great job. From the US we have three students.
- Den Delimarsky @DennisCode who is also a MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional in Windows Phone Development and an @DZone Zone Leader
- Patrick Godwin @ximplosionx who has been working on some cool Kinect projects lately. Patrick will be a college freshmen in the fall and I expect even more great things from him.
- Tom Ziegmann @tziegmann who is also a Microsoft MVP. Tom has a nice Flickr stream on the Imagine Cup as well.
Here is a picture of Patrick talking to Jeremy Lee from Microsoft Game Studio. Jeremy is one of the judges for the game competition at the Imagine Cup. There is a lot of good networking going on here between students, industry judges, university faculty and all the participants. I’ve had some great conversations with my counterparts from around the world myself including some from Russia and Jordan. A wonderful learning experience just being here.
Here are Den and Patrick with the game showcase going on behind them.
Behind them the judges are play testing the game entries. Yesterday each of the teams made a formal presentation for 30 minutes followed by a 15 minute question and answer period. Today’s play testing is the final judging round before the winners are selected. Den, Patrick, and Tom have been interviewing teams for the last couple of days as well. Over at his blog, Patrick has already posted some interviews and other stories from the Imagine Cup. I recommend you check them out to see what sort of teams and what sorts of entries are represented. Den has also posted at least one team review on his blog – Den by default and I know that more are coming. Tom’s posts appear at Tom On Tech and he also has several good posts up. So if you are interested in a student's eye view of the Imagine Cup those are three blogs worth reading. And if you are on Twitter you should follow them for the latest news as it happens.