Glorious moments at the kangaroo’s land… Imagine Cup 2012 – Sydney, Australia !

I grabbed the chance to celebrate the 10^th anniversary of Imagine Cup competition. Imagine Cup is a yearly competition organized by Microsoft that challenges students to “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems”. In ten years, the Imagine Cup has grown to be a truly global competition focused on finding solutions to real-world problems. What began as a student competition in 2003 with 1,000 students from 25 countries has evolved over the past 10 years and grown enormously. 1.65 million students from 190 countries that have participated in the competition since its creation.

Out of 358,000 students registered in the 2012 edition, 424 students from 106 teams made it to the worldwide finals in Sydney, Australia. Students competed this year in several Challenges and categories like Software Design, Game Design, IT Challenge, Windows Phone Challenge, and Windows Azure Challenge.

It was a great pleasure for me to receive an invitation from Microsoft to fly to a beautiful city after mentoring the “Klein Team” and winning the 3rd place in Windows Azure Challenge. The Klein Team consists of three young and passionate students from Algeria and myself as a mentor. Our team was passionate to create both a compelling solution that solves a healthcare problem and a platform that utilizes the latest trends in Technology like Cloud, Mobile, and Big Data. Thus, we chose to enter the Windows Azure Challenge with project “DiaLife”. It was a tough category where more than 200 teams competed all over the world.

Dialife is a healthcare platform that responds to the needs of diabetic patients and their families by combining the elements of diabetes management into one simple and intuitive multi-support solution.

By harnessing the power of the cloud, DiaLife is able to connect across multiple devices, which makes access possible from any location at any time. It provides a dashboard where the user can drill-down to see the blood-sugar readings and how will he is doing.

Dialife also consists of a DiaWall feature which gives the opportunity for doctors and care-givers to interact with patient. The system is also able to send SMS reminders to patients regarding insulin injections. DiaPedia is one of the interesting features where the patient get personalized and targeted recommendations about living healthy with diabetes according to his own medical condition. This will help diabetic patients in keeping track of their glucometer readings in a systematic and organized way and interact with their doctors in real-time.

As a mentor and data enthusiast, I developed the BI & Big Data architecture and the business plan to envision an evidence-based care solution where Dialife can be a next-generation disease management platform that helps doctors with data-driven decision support tools and prediction for adverse events.

Dan’l Lewin, Corporate Vice President for Strategic and Emerging Business Development at Microsoft, kicked off the event in July 6 followed by a video message from the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard welcoming the students to Australia. The event was held in Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre (SCEC).

Besides, the trip was unforgettable because of the cozy atmosphere in Sydney and the warm welcomes from the great aussies there. The care of the country’s officials was quite clear where the flags of Imagine Cup were placed everywhere across the Darling Harbour in Sydney.

I woke up in an early morning to start my first day in Sydney and guess what was the view? [See the bottom
picture] Ain’t that cool?

It was quite a 5 days full of energy and passion from students all over the world. The rooms in the convention center were fuelled by learning sessions and team presentations through-out the event days.

Furthermore, several projects were outstanding and unique and I can’t but mention the Australian StethoCloud team who is a blend between medical and computer science students. This team developed a digital stethoscope that connects to your cell phone and harness Big Data for high computations in the cloud which will in terms detects signs of the earliest stages of pneumonia. I also met several data scientists and BI/Big Data influencers and great Australian friends in town.

I managed to go sightseeing to several amazing places like the Sydney’s Aquarium which lets you immerse into the sea life with a truly diverse variety of fishes and sea species.

And of course I could not leave Sydney without meeting the lovely kangaroos….

Our Project got impressive feedback from industry experts worldwide. And here’s a photo for our team with S. Somasegar ,Corporate Vice President of the Developer Division and Walid Abu–Hadba, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Developer & Platform Evangelism (DPE) group.

And here is the Windows Azure trophy which returned home with the Klein Team….

The 1st place cup in Software Design went to Ukraine who developed gloves that can translate sign language into speech.

In the final ceremony, the Imagine Cup flag was handled to Russia after announcing that Imagine Cup 2013 Worldwide Finals will be held in Saint Petersburg, Russia!