many thanks to my good friends Alan Spillane and James patten for their tireless work on the day of the Imagine Cup finals. They videoed and interviewed the teams and have produced a fantastic compendium. They put together a great edit of the three final teams and I hope they don’t mind me linking to the clip below.

Alans blog here

and the Microsoft Ireland blog here

I have started adding web articles about IT Sligo’s Imagine Cup win to delicious. To keep track of whats being written about us view links here.

Here are a few images that kinda capture the day we had. From the disastrous start which almost put us out of the competition, through to the afternoon and mixing with all the other students at our stands in the lobby, to the announcement that we had won.

 
Before our first presentation this morning, our camera failed (I dropped it). Then the second camera decided not to work. It took us half an hour to get a fix. Half an hour of absolute panic, pressure, sweat and cardiac arrest. I have no idea why these things happen. We had prepared so meticulously, on the previous day, we had been in the Microsoft building all day and set up all our equipment twice as a final test and all worked perfectly. These pictures were taken at a moment when we were actually dying. I’m glad someone took them, it’s a great memory now. Drama, tension, suspense.

Cristina with out Microsoft buddy Scott.

John Kelleher (our mentor and one of our lecturers), Cristina and me by our stand during the day.

Liam Cronin (Microsoft) announces the final three in the auditorium. This is where we conducted our second presentation in the afternoon.

Padraig Harte, John Kelleher, Keith McManus (lecturers and head of department, IT Sligo) and Cristina and myself. This was taken before we knew.

I explain to Mary Hanifan (Minister for Education) what our project is all about.

 
Mary Hanifan wanted to take one of our cars home with her. We said we might be able to come to some sort of arrangement.

This was the very moment that Mary Hanifan announced the second place runners up and where we realised that we had won. It’s a blurry but wonderful photograph.

Presentations

The beautiful Imagine Cup.

Life seems to open more and ore doors for us. I don’t know why and I don’t quite know how. Today we won the Imagine Cup. We travelled to Dublin to compete in the Irish finals. We conducted our presentation twice and at 5pm, Mary Hannifan announced IT Sligo as the winners. She actually announced third place, then second place and finally the winners so there was suspense and drams and it was a glorious moment.

Are we third? no

Are we second?….no

Well there’s only one place left. Time for hugs, clenched fists, embraces, tears, lifting trophy’s high in the air, saying thank you and maybe sometime in the future it hits you what actually happened during those glorious minutes.

Today, we won the Imagine Cup

We now go on to represent Ireland at the world finals in Paris during July. This means that our workload now doubles. Microsoft now get involved and start mentoring us. We need to step up a gear now. Everything has to step up a gear. The work is only just beginning. Glorious!

The final three are announced. We are in the final

Wish us luck, we are on at three on the main auditorium

We’ve been in and done our first presentation. After an initial disaster (the camera failed) we used Marina’s backup camera and did a good presentation. The judges were impressed and we are hopeful of making it through to the final 3 later today.

Just in from a night at Shelbourne dog track. We had a great evening meeting the other teams and judges. Even won a few quid on some muts.

It’s 23:12pm, I’m in my hotel room and I am exhausted. I have just remembered that I still have to iron a shirt. Will the torture never end

It’s been a great day. We got into Microsoft early today. Got our kit setup and tested in two rooms. Met our Microsoft handler and managed to do two final runs of the presentation in my hotel room.

We are on at 10am in the morning for the first round. It would be something else if we made it to the final three for the afternoon session.

We have done all we can do now. We can do no more. Iron a shirt and get a good nights sleep. That’s all that’s left to do.

………I really must try and get a hold of that Jeff Wayne classic on vinyl. . . . .

Anyways, its the night before we drive to Dublin. The plan is to meet Scotty (our Microsoft partner) at about lunchtime tomorrow (Wednesday). Maybe have lunch with him and then go about setting up our presentation kit. We are bringing our own network, a model car park, 6 model cars, a network camera, 2 lap tops and lots of cable so we have a lot of gear to deal with. We hope to use tomorrow to do a few dry runs of the presentation making sure that we can use Microsoft’s equipment such as projectors, pa systems etc.

Tomorrow night, we are all booked into a corporate suite at Leopardstown dog track for dinner and an evening of socializing, getting to know the other teams and the judges etc. D-Day is Thursday and the presentations start early (8-8:30am) at Microsoft EPDC2 in Sandyford Industrial Estate.

At this point, may I propose a new verb to the English language. The verb ‘brick’. To brick, I brick, you brick, we brick, we are bricking it. ke ke ke ke ke

We have been very busy preparing for the big day of the competition (Thursday 10th April). As part of our presentation we have produced a movie. It’s job is to highlight how seriously we take research and good communication / information as a basis for taking on any project. We are also using it to demonstrate clearly the environmental issues associated with parking problems.

The movie is available here.

Please note; this is a very low definition and low quality version of the original movie in order to make it small enough for people to download quickly. The original version (the one we will use during our presentations) is much larger and of very high quality.