Imagine Cup 2010 South Quarter Final

    Good afternoon, habrachitatel!

    On March 19, the regional quarter-final of the Microsoft Imagine Cup competition was held at the TTI SFU (on the official website: www.imaginecup.com and  www.imaginecup.ru ) in the software products section of the southern federal district.

    Here is a small eyewitness report. 

    I want to warn you right away, since I am a participant, I can be subjective in some matters.

    Actually, the quarter-finals were held as part of the festival of theory and practice of programming, which takes place annually in Taganrog. Within the framework of the festival, a conference and, in fact, the quarter-finals are held.

    The festival began with a welcoming speech by the head of the CAD department Kureichik V.V., after which the representative of Microsoft A. Gavrilov made a report on MSF.

    Then 4 student reports were heard, and, after the break, the main part began.

    This year, 8 projects were announced. Six teams came to the presentation (at the end of the article there are links to brief descriptions of all participating projects).

    The first thing I wanted to pay attention to was the hall - Kureichik V.V. Before the performance, he mentioned that we would be performing in the best hall in Russia, but in fact it turned out that the microphones installed in the hall emit terrible noise, because of which it is simply impossible to make out what the speaker is saying.

    Attention! Next is a fairly subjective story about projects!

    The first to speak was the team with the project “Psychophysiological measurements in the process of working with the personal computer“ Ability ”. At its core, the system is a survey system. The nomination in the Imagine Cup program is weak, and does not correspond to the topic.

    Then came the project “Glif”, which also presented a testing system.

    Actually, the first two projects were close to each other, poorly matched the topic, and the presentation did not differ in anything unusual.

    But the third project “Blindsynth” is already a little worthy of attention. More precisely, not even the project itself, but rather the presentation, or rather its absence. The team presented an interesting project (interesting, though one hardly believes in its success in application), but did it very ineptly.

    The fourth project of the Health Manager of the TTI team. Here the intrigue begins: the first worthy project appears, the only drawback of which is that it is brazenly written off from the project of the team of Nizhny Novgorod, which last year took second place in the final of the Imagine Cup. To an open question about this, the team assured that they had never heard of such a system. The team answered the most interesting questions very evasively. By the way, another important remark, the team leader is V. Kureichik.

    The fifth project “Advanced Advertisement” has a very good commercialization, but the guys were let down by the presentation (even more likely the equipment in the hall - they simply could not be heard)

    Well, we were the last to come up with the project of the Infozorius system for collecting and monitoring information on the state of the urban environment. After the presentation, it became clear to everyone that the struggle for first and second place would flare up between our team and the TTI team.

    Answering questions from the audience (many of which were frankly stupid) and the jury, participants and spectators were asked to leave for the meeting. Instead of the promised 5 minutes, we were kept outside the door for 20–25 minutes.

    The announcement of the results began with the third place, which was awarded to the Blindsynth project. The second place was awarded to our team, with the following words (unfortunately not verbatim): “Yes, the project has a future. Yes, the project was well presented. Yes, it has a twist. But nevertheless, after long meetings, we came to the conclusion that the Health Manager project is more worthy to take first place. And so that the team would not be offended, we give them the most expensive prizes. "
    First, it looks a bit like farmers. The second - "the most expensive prizes" consisted of a wired mouse and keyboard.

    After closing, one of the jury members approached me (unfortunately, I don’t know either the name or the last name) and said something like this:
    “I think this is not right. The first place should have been given to you. In two weeks at the semifinals, it will become clear to everyone “

    Another very interesting thing for me is that in Taganrog at the Imagine Cup quarterfinal, the evaluation criteria, for some reason, differ from those criteria that are listed on the official website.

    Yes, by the way, a little more about the organization. After the performance of the TTI team, approximately 1/3 of the audience got up and headed for the exit - of course, I don’t know how in other universities, but, for example, it is customary in us to wait for a break, and not to leave when the other team is performing - firstly, this very distracting. Secondly, those who come out create noise, and in the absence of microphones the speakers are simply inaudible.

    Summarizing all that has been written, I want to say:
     - apparently the presence of interested parties in the commission is not a good solution;
     - assessment criteria should be the same at all levels;
     - I would be very interested to look at the evaluation protocol;
     - Once again I draw attention to the not very high level of organization of the event.

    As promised, brief descriptions of the projects, as well as a recording of our performance (I apologize for the sound quality - but there is nothing better)

    I. as promised, descriptions of brief projects:
    PROJECT: “PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL MEASUREMENTS DURING THE WORK WITH THE PERSONAL COMPUTER“ ABILITY ”
    PROJECT:“ ADVANCED ADVERTISEMENT ”
    PROJECT:“ BLINDSYNTH
    PROJECT: “E-
    GLIF
    PROJECT: “ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION COLLECTION AND MONITORING SYSTEM“ INFOZORIUS “”
    PROJECT: “HEALTH MANAGER”
    PROJECT “LIFENET”


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