The Cup
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Not the America's Cup, or the World Cup, or any other sports trophy. It's the Imagine Cup, a chance for students to pitch their ideas for software projects to Bill Gates. I had never heard of it, but apparently it's a yearly competition for students around the world to build some type of software. This year was software to enable better education.
I was in a couple of programming contests in high school and college and I have to admit that they were pretty fun. And hard. We had one in high school back in 82 or 83 where we had 5 problems to try and solve in Pascal or C inside of a 7 or 8 hour time frame one Saturday. I think the team was 5, and we certainly learned a lot about each other just trying to work together under time pressures.
What I do like about the Imagine Cup is that it is limited to students and it pushes the team concept. I'd argue that the ability to work on a team is as critical as your technical development skills for the vast majority of us. There will always be the few who can shine alone, but most of us will need to collaborate and indeed even the superstars can gain synergies by learning to work with others.
I'm sure some people are a little upset that Microsoft requires their software to be used in most of the categories, but I think if they are sponsoring the competition, which still requires students to think and build their general skills in software, that it's ok for them to try and get some value for their products.
I think that this is a good way to try and bring some practicality to education and at the same time allowing a great many of the world's students to bring their creativity and enthusiasm to bear on solving some problem like education.
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Why would anyone have any problem with a company advancing themselves this way? It happens all the time. It's almost an American (if not worldwide - I'm limited in data points) entreprenourial tradition. People that have problems with Microsoft requiring their own software be used for the competition would have probably not be successful at selling their own software.
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The Imagine Cup's been around for a while, but I think it's limited to amateurs. (No, I won't go off on a rant about the state of the industry at this time.) Maybe in another couple years, I'll launch my munchkins at it just for fun. Competition and unrealistic deadlines are the spice of life, no? I used to work for a CEO who thought so...
But for some bizarre reason, you did remind me to wonder what happened to the Code Room... I've always hated so-called "reality TV" but this was something that I didn't mind watching. (Dallas SWAT was pretty cool, too.) I guess they've made one more episode since the last one I watched. I wonder if they just ran out of cash to fund more?
MSDN TV: The Code Room: Pilot Episode
MSDN TV: The Code Room: Building Mobile Apps and Bluetooth Enabled ...
MSDN TV: The Code Room: Breaking Into Vegas
I've met one of the coders involved in the pilot episode at a .NET users group meeting in Houston, and she had enough complaints about how much better the folks in the second episode got treated than they did in the pilot that I tend to believe the "reality" aspects of the challenge.
When I watched the first episode, I remember thinking, "Wow. Free pizza. I wish we got that when we had to work all night to get something delivered..." Not that anybody's ever offered to follow me around with a camera while I'm on a project, but I'm thinking that it would definitely be a comedy!
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so the next bazillion-dollar idea in tech is going to come from some little kid, and they're gonna get what? A scholarship? I like these types of contests, but I don't think it should be about soliciting new ideas from people who you legally don't have to pay. I know what the purpose is here, but it seems fishy... can't we educate kids without ripping off their ideas... they have the best ideas!
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Actually they've helped some of the past winners and finalists build companies. Granted with investments from MS, so they get some of the upside, but so do the people they're helping.
I don't think the idea is a bazillion $$, but if MS makes a $100,000 and so does the guy with the idea, that's not so bad.
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Huh? How did a competition for school kids turn into a siphoning of entrepreneurs and innovation? None of the entrants (age 16 and up students of high schools and/or colleges) are likely to be producing billion dollar ideas (although I'll cheer for them if they do!) for the contest. And if they're already capable of doing so, I'd recommend they skip the "competition" and dive into the real marketplace competition!
Of course, reading the rules carefully resulted in the inevitable disappointment that my kids are disqualified not only because of their age but because they're my kids.
The whole purpose of the Cup is to get kids excited about the career potential in technology, especially software. Insufficient numbers of them are studying computer science (especially in the U.S.) and the more of them we can encourage with some "exciting incentives" (exciting for teenagers), the better. I vaguely recall when I could be excited by a mere $25k.
Please tell a kid you like to work a little harder at math and daydream about working for the Xbox team. I know I still do both. Heh.
That reminds me that I need to go check on my ranking in the Netflix Prize competition. I can still get excited about a million bucks. I hope I still have some time to sharpen my data mining algorithms... Last time I checked, I was still getting my butt handed to me by geekier data miners than I.
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All I heard was "a chance for students to pitch their ideas for software projects to Bill Gates" - who is well-known for buying people off for way less than their idea is worth.
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I think everyone that buys ideas is looking to do so at less than the worth. Though I'm not sure the guys that sold Hotmail for $400M or whatever think they got ripped off. Maybe, maybe not.
You could argue that the value is lower by itself than if Microsoft buys it. After all, they can market and push it more than many others.
Not saying they're right or wrong, but not sure they're ripping people off.
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