Raveesh's space

Mr Ajay Thomas Abraham, the Academic Development Evangelist from Microsoft and Mr Deepak Jagadish, the team lease for the User Group activities throughout India were the apostles of Microsoft Student partner Program for the Academic Year 2007-08. Both of them have left Microsoft in pursuit of excellence and to follow their dreams.

  Ajay Thomas Abraham had been the sole point of contact from the time I joined Microsoft Student Partner Program in April 2007. I still remember my first ever mail to him where I had addressed him as "Sir" and he had replied back immediately, "Please dont call me Sir. Shall we keep this formality aside!". Well, now who can expect this degree of Down-To-Earth behaviour from Microsoft's ADE!

 Our (MSPs) relationship with Ajay is just more than ADE - MSP relationship. More than anything, he is very approachable. He's left Microsoft to join Indian School of Business as a Teaching / research assistant with a pointer to do his PhD in Business Administration and later be a Professor. Ajay, really a noble thought. We wish you all the very best for your future ventures. We will definitely miss your humorous ways of illustrating things and of-course, the everlasting battle for MSP kits and bags between you and Lakshman.

Ajay's Send-off Party

Deepak Jagadish, the 2 times winner of Imagine Cup India joined Microsoft 6 months back. Silent by nature, he is a real warrior of perfection. He vitalized the MSP program along with Ajay in this 6 months of short stay with Microsoft. Since Ajay was always entrusted with multiple works (as he was the ADE), Deepak took the brunt of the work of South India level MSP program. It was due to the effort of the Duo that we had a 2 days South India level MSP Bootcamp meet.

Deepak is gone to pursue his MS in Human - Computer Interaction in Georgia Institute of Technology. All the very best Deepak.

Deepak Jagadish

Mr Mark D'Souza and Mr Siddharth Prakash have taken up the role of ADE and Team lease for UG activities respectively. I met them a couple of days back. Both of them are really enterprising and full of ideas to carry this program further ahead. We are extremely pleased to welcome both of you aboard. As this is my final year as a MSP in undergrad level, I want to make this most productive for Bangalore dot-net student group.

Imagine Cup National Finals

Date : 9^th May 2008

Venue : NIMHANS convention Centre, Bangalore

Imagine Cup is an annual competition sponsored and hosted by Microsoft Corp. which brings together young technologists worldwide to help resolve some of the world's toughest challenges which was started in 2002.

This Year’s theme for Imagine Cup is “Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment”. In my opinion, for the first time, Imagine Cup theme addressed a global issue which focused on not just the betterment of the quality of life of mankind but also cautioned about the biggest problem that mankind might face if care is not taken from this day itself.

Out of the 8 teams that made to the Software Development Invitational (SDI) category of Imagine cup National Finals, I actually liked the following 4 teams:

(Please note that this reflects purely my opinion and not public / panelists/judges)

1) Project Rummage:  by team BlankSpace

Anuj Kumar
Ishan Bishnoi
Prateek Khurana
Ravi Atluri
Details :
A system to connect those who want to dispose of “garbage/junk” with those who might have innovative uses for the same. The system also gives potential users of such items optimal collection-paths to collect all the items in a locality.

From: Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Gandhi Nagar

2) Agri Pals

Arpita Shrivastava
Kshitij Shukla
Rohit Bhat
U. Karthik
Details :
An interactive application to dynamically guide farmers as to which crops are best suited to their soil, water and weather conditions, which fertilizers, irrigation schemes, and other agricultural methods to use. The application also assesses the effect of the current crop on the soil condition and suggests the crop that should be sown next, which it then iteratively uses to suggest a series of crops to grow one after the other.
From:
National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra

3) Project Enpower : by Team SKAN 

Amith P George
Karun A. B.
Noel Sequeira
Sameet Singh Khajuria
Details :
A centralized power-management system to monitor an organization’s entire computer network and to switch idle computers into the power-save mode.
From :
Bharti Vidyapeeth College of Engineering, Mumbai
Fr. Conceicao Rodrigues Institute of Technology, Mumbai
Vivekananda Educational Society’s Institute of Technology, Mumbai

Note : This group won 2nd prize in the National Finals

4)  Novices at Work

Krunal Dedhia
Paras Doshi
Saili Dharia
Veenit Mavan
Details :
A self-configurable wireless-sensor mesh-network system that monitors and analyzes agricultural-soil parameters such as moisture-content, nutrient composition, temperature, pressure, and light. This system can be used by the government or NGOs at a large scale in order to provide recommendations to farmers on crop-related decisions.
From :
Vivekananda Educational Society’s Institute of Technology, Mumbai

Note : This group won the National Finals and are representing India in Paris.

5) Project Aura Contra : by Team Green Waves

Aadhar Mittal
Gagandeep Singh
Sandeep Bansal
Shobhit Sinha
Details :
A citizen-activism-based solution that exhorts the public to take photographs of environmental issues in their daily life, and to send the same via mobile-phone to a centralized grievance-redressal agency, which can then disseminate the information to appropriate NGOs.
From :
Delhi University

Note : This Group got 3rd prize in the finals.

The events that followed the project demo were really amazing.

Dr RK Pachauri, the director of IPCC which won the Nobel award for peace in 2007 sent his video message expressing his anxiety about the way Globe is gaining temperature. He appreciated Microsoft's efforts to create awareness among the youth by including this as the topic of their international competition. He said, inviting Young brain to compete will pull in Youth towards this global issue so that the great disaster can be averted.

This was followed by a Panel Discussion on Innovation in India and Developing country:

Panel included                 :               1) Rajdeep Sahrawat, VP, NASSCOM

                                                          2) Professor Samir Barua, Director, IIM Ahmedabad

                                                         3) Dr. Gopichand Katragadda, GM Operations, GE Global Research, Bangalore

                                                          4) Mr. Paul Murphy, Director of innovation, Microsoft India

                                                          5) Professor Sadagopan, Director, IIITB Bangalore.

The panel discussed Innovation in India. They were of the opinion that Innovation need not be technology alone. It can happen anywhere and any field. We must be in a position to identify those at right time. Prof. Samir Barua opined that all innovations need not be desirable in the society point of view.

The most catchy and powerful statement (according to me) was by Dr Kadragadda who said: Create With freedom, Nurture with passion and change with detachment. This is the only way innovation can be made effective.

To my question on Will Patenting and acquisitions curb innovation globally, the panel gave a not-so-convincing answer (I wasn't convinced). They said patenting will prevent the bigger companies from using the idea of startups. But in my opinion, any new Idea a small company comes up with, if the big company feels it’s really profitable, the legal group will do research for weeks and definitely find at least 1 idea (may be GUI or even the way menu changes!) and sue the start-ups. If no legal laws are breached, the companies might seek to acquire them. So the innovation in this process curbs. BUT, I'm not a connoisseur in these issues; it’s just my opinion, that’s it.

Mr. Kiran Karnik, the ex-president of NASSCOM spoke of the necessity of technology. He said technology makes difference to everyone’s life: Making health better, making education better, making communication better etc. Students must focus more in coming up with solutions which acts like a silver-bullet to today’s problem.

He also said, he envied the youth because we have much better opportunity and options to do things than they had.  One notable point of his was “Innovation doesn’t necessarily take place in Multi-Million dollar labs. It happens as and when necessity arrives to selected creative problem.”  He made one more notable point: Though the contest is Imagine Cup, the problem it vouches to solve is not imaginary!

Mr RK Misra, the winner of Times of India's Lead India shared his opinion on Imagine Cup and Innovation. He congratulated a few teams and expressed his wish to help these teams to convert their ideas into the business model. We were lucky to get a chance to take snap with him.

Mr Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman of Microsoft India announced the winners and runners of this prestigious event.

Mr Ajay Thomas Abraham, the Academic Development Evangelist from Microsoft proposed the Vote of thanks which was followed by the press conference.

          Mr Ajay proposing the vote of thanks

                               Press conference

The Student partners also had a chance to take photo with Paul Murphy, Ajay Thomas Abraham and Mr Deepak Jagdish from Microsoft.

End Note: 

 Looking at the project demos of the 8 finalists this year, my desire and determination to participate in Imagine Cup next year has definitely strengthened. I could see the same determination in a few others. I am extremely happy that this has influenced the way we look at nature.

Sunil

Sunil's slides can be found in the following URLs:

1)  http://www.slideshare.net/guestd27428/intro-to-visual-studio2008/

2)  http://www.slideshare.net/guestd27428/introduction-to-silverlight-327462/

 

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