My role was to challenge their ideas, push back to help validate the process Nick MacKechnieTop fourWinner: Team OneBuzz, University of Auckland, for using technology to inhibit the spread of malaria and ultimately eliminate the disease.
Second: Team MCG, University of Auckland, with the Sentinel project, a laser beam system for killing mosquitoes.
Third: Team SkyEye, University of Auckland, with a software solution designed to prevent car accidents and improve road safety globally.
Fourth: Team Food, Lincoln University, with Where is My Food, a database of food expiry dates for publishing to websites and local notice boards to inform people in need where to go for free food.
The winner ... Team OneBuzz.
THE buzz of activity and noise around the 20 technology stands manned by tertiary students gave the impression of sideshow alley at a major fair.
The students were trying to attract the attention of anyone who would listen to their pitch of how they had used technology to solve a major global problem.
Nearly 300 teams originally applied to compete in the Microsoft Imagine Cup, the fifth time it had been held in New Zealand. Interest was high, because last year's winner had come third at the Worldwide Imagine Cup, in Poland.
The concepts had been whittled down to 20 and the teams were chosen.
Hundreds of cans of energy drinks were consumed during the planning phase by the teams.
Thousands of hours were put into each project by the teams, as there was real potential to solve the problems and have the idea become commercial.
The 20 teams presented in less than six hours throughout the Festival Day held at the University of Auckland Business School.
Following the morning presentation, the teams set up their stalls and competed again to get attention from the business leaders attending.
Team Unique, from the University of Canterbury, lived up to its name in more ways than one.
The team which had a "Free Education" project found their meeting place destroyed in the February earthquake. They were meeting in the office of their Microsoft mentor Nick MacKechnie but had to look elsewhere after the quake.
Team member Johansen Sidabutar told the Otago Daily Times university lectures were being held in tents after the quake and the team sometimes met in the university car park to talk about the ideas.
One team member, Jerry Lai, went to Sydney, so his contribution was confined to chats on Skype. Mr Lai flew back two days before the competition to help with the final presentation of the project. He was returning to Sydney yesterday.
The team had come up with an education solution it believed was open to commercialisation to help reduce the costs of getting educational material into some of the world's poorest areas.
Edushare was a universal education platform that aimed to standardise and distribute educational material to different parts of the world. It was a web- and mobile-based software that helped provide children and teachers access to standard and authenticated educational materials.
Mr MacKechnie, who is originally from Dunedin, said each team had three mentors - one from Microsoft, one from the industry and one from academia.
He had provided office space until the earthquake and continued to provide mentoring support until the competition.
"My role was to challenge their ideas, push back to help validate the process.
"The team comes up with the idea. My role is to ask is it new and has someone else already solved this problem?"
There were lots of smart people in the world and it took a lot of research and checking to ensure the idea each team had was original, he said.
"In the end, it is their project and they choose whether to listen to advice or not."
Mr MacKechnie said the mentoring process lasted about four months. It was important the team had a room to use to bounce ideas off each other. The quake did complicate the process for Team Unique but he believed team members still worked as hard as any of the others in finalising their presentation.
They had worked through their holidays and were missing lectures to attend the Imagine Cup, in Auckland.
"The exciting thing is seeing all the passion and enthusiasm. They can identify a problem and work out how to address it."
Most teams entered more than once because they had built up relationships with their peers, he said.
Microsoft New Zealand developer and platform group director Scott Wylie could not disguise his enthusiasm for the competition when interviewed.
The Imagine Cup was a way for Microsoft to give back to the community and show its belief in education.
The feedback on the cup had been outstanding and interest continued to grow.
The New Zealand teams had shown they were as good as any others in the world, particularly after the third placing last year in the worldwide cup competition. There was a chance the winner this year would also compete in New York but had to face a regional competition to secure a place.
Some designs were of such "stunning simplicity" it was a surprise someone had not designed them before, he said.
"You look at others and think, 'that could change the world'."
Mr Wylie would like to take the cup to Wellington in the future to put the students in front of a different audience, such as Crown Research Institutes.
"We rank right up there in the world. In five years, we have done well and held our own in the worldwide final and are getting recognition along the way.
"This proves we are a nation of innovators and enterprises."
After a day of presentations and gruelling interviews, teams and supporters piled into a lecture room to hear the names of the final four teams.
After a warm-up by a comedian, the names of the four finalists were read out.
Each of the finalists gave a 15-minute presentation to a panel of judges.
Team OneBuzz, from the University of Auckland, was crowned the winner with its project to wipe out malaria.
The solution involved using technology to inhibit the spread of malaria and ultimately eliminate the disease.
Team OneBuzz was also last year's winner when it was Team OneBeep. It was that team which was third in the worldwide final.
Team member Vinny Lohan said they had worked hard over the summer months to refine and develop the concept under the guidance of the mentors.
"It took months of sweat and tears to get to this point and the whole process from generating the original idea through to seeing the project become a reality has been absolutely incredible," he said.
Head judge for the 2011 Imagine Cup Brett O'Reilly will be part of the judging panel for the worldwide competition in New York this year.
He said one of the main things he looked for was how the teams planned to take their idea to the market - commercialising it.
"One thing we do well in New Zealand is invention. We do the early stage things well then struggle to commercialise it."
Getting the students to understand the commercial options was important.
Already the standard had improved, he said.
Three years ago, when he first started judging, there was one team wearing suits. Now, because of the success of Team OneBeep, most teams were wearing suits. It was good to see the benchmark rising because it would benefit New Zealand and the technology industry.
Mr O'Reilly, the chief executive of the NZICT Group, said it was important that teams could perform on a stage in front of judges and an audience.
It was no use having the best ideas if they could not be communicated. He was looking for teams astute in communication. Some of the ideas and projects were very technologically complex and they had to be explained.
The success of OneBeep had attracted global attention.
Team One Beep has focused on the One Laptop Per Child programme and its 1.4 million deployed laptops. The team came up with an inexpensive and robust method to solve the problem of sending educational content to these laptops, which are sent out to impoverished schools and communities in areas of the world where there were no phone lines, let alone internet services. The solution involved using Team One Beep's software to package a file of educational data as audio to be sent via radio waves. This could be received by any cheap AM/FM radio which passed it on to the laptop. The file was then converted back to its original form once it has been received on the children's laptop, ready to be viewed.
The idea was simple but very practical, Mr O'Reilly said.
One of the challenges the ICT industry faced was keeping its talented people in New Zealand, he said. Google regularly "swung by" New Zealand universities and grabbed the top students.
Having competitions like the Imagine Cup helped student realise there was a global market for their ideas, he said.
Top four
Winner: Team OneBuzz, University of Auckland, for using technology to inhibit the spread of malaria and ultimately eliminate the disease.
Second: Team MCG, University of Auckland, with the Sentinel project, a laser beam system for killing mosquitoes.
Third: Team SkyEye, University of Auckland, with a software solution designed to prevent car accidents and improve road safety globally.
Fourth: Team Food, Lincoln University, with Where is My Food, a database of food expiry dates for publishing to websites and local notice boards to inform people in need where to go for free food.
