One man against the world ...again

It feels rather strange writing this post as it was only a year ago since I was writing roughly the same thing, about my experiences from the Imagine Cup 2010 in Warsaw and summarising some of the amazing things I saw and learnt.

In life and computing I have a pretty simple mantra which is the reason why I do the things that I do:

It may be easy to have an idea, but its what you do with it that counts!

While I was in New York for the Imagine Cup I realised change comes about when you think big, think outside the box and have the tenacity to not give up when others may.

Those that built the incredible skyscrapers that dwarfed New York's skyline didn't think "I don't think we need another floor", instead they built up to what was technically feasible and beyond, I try and do the same with software.

Being the only one man team got me noticed, Adam Daniels has done some great press pieces around my progress last year in Warsaw, and this year in New York; humorously entitled 'Return of the One Man Army'

On the technical front, being able to juggle .Net, .Net CF, .Net MF, WEC7, WPF, WP7 and all the other technologies involved to create a solution had challenges, but where is the fun if there wasn't any. Now I enjoy messing around with gadgets; one of the best ways to think up new things so I was surprised how few teams used .NetMF, Colin Miller picked up on this and did a great blog post around my entry on the MSDN .NetMF portal.

On a personal front, I met a lot of amazing people in New York, and had a chance to compete with some amazingly clever chaps from the UK including Damo.

So to anyone thinking of taking part in the Imagine Cup 2012, which for its 10th anniversary is being held in Australia, it is a once in a lifetime opportunity!

Save the children, save the world

Well I have been rather busy lately, which is quite an understatement.

As I type this I am in New York sitting in an internet cafe. Today is round two of the Imagine Cup 2011 finals.

After presenting twice yesterday, consisting of a powerpoint presentation and an in booth demonstration. I was selected to progress to round 2 which involves a 20 Q&A session with the judges.

Just over 1 week to go!

It is now just over 1 week till I make a dash out of the country to New York for the Imagine Cup worldwide finals. Things are progressing well on the software front with the initial MSMQ networking between the embedded device and PC now working.

Imagine Cup 2011 UK Finals & The world

So there media has already started churning away, horray says my CV.

Here are a few of the things that have sprouted up on the internet so far:

Microsoft Imagine Cup 2011: UK Finals from Tim Rogers on Vimeo.

A great video showing off the UK Finals (And you can see me at the conference table right at the end of the video)

http://www.imaginecup.com/community/blog/peer-to-peer-volunteer-network--project-ove--wins-first-place-at-imagine-cup-uk-finals

Microsoft has released a Blog post on the main Imagine Cup website about the UK finals where you can see a lovely picture of me and also a comment that I don't believe I ever said (in those particular words) ...creative journalism :)

http://yorkitacademy.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/university-of-york-scores-top-marks-microsoft-imagine-cup-uk-2011/

York University kindly mentioning me winning the UK finals ...twice. Was also nice them mentioning the Degree I never did (I did a Bsc not an Msc, but hope to get the Msc certificate in the post soon)

Imagine Cup 2011, I will be seeing you in New York

Another year, another Imagine Cup entry. Last year I managed to win the UK finals in the embedded category and rank in the top 6 world wide during the finals hosted in Warsaw.

Last years entry was based around an augmented reality system for the blind and partially sighted individuals to help give them back their independence.

After a great day at Microsoft UK, I won the UK finals for the 2011 Imagine Cup (Its me in the middle):

For this years entry I wanted to do something different, for starters I choose a funny team name: Cycling into trees, as I originally was going to created an advanced computer system for my bicycle in affect creating the worlds safest bicycle. So onto my entry, I am creating a baby monitoring scheme that connects to a home automation system so that the babies environmental conditions are maintained at the correct levels to ensure a good nights sleep and reduce the chance of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

More information on the software design coming soon.