Hi, and welcome to the Imagine Cup blog – the place for the latest news, resources, content and just good stuff from the world’s leading student technology competition.
So what is the Imagine Cup about? Why is Microsoft putting all this effort into a global student competition?
We think it’s pretty simple. We believe that the next wave of great technology breakthroughs and the next generation of leading companies in every walk of life will be driven by today’s students. So why not challenge those brilliant minds to use their skills, brains and passion to solve some of the world’s toughest problems? This means technology for social cause matters.
Along the way, these incredible students compete with the brightest minds in their country, their region and when they will finally reach Cairo on the 3rd of July , they’ll be competing with the brightest minds from every corner of the earth. Over 300,000 students registered to compete this year and only 400 of those students will make it to the Pyramids. This is the best of the best of the best.
So how we define “the world’s toughest problems”?
 | Well the short answer is we don’t! The United Nations has defined eight Millennium Development Goals, which have been agreed by 189 countries. The goals ask us all to imagine a world with less poverty, less hunger, less disease, a world that provides people everywhere with a greater chance of survival and opportunity: - End poverty and hunger
- Universal education
- Gender equality
- Child health
- Maternal health
- Combat HIV/AIDS
- Environmental Sustainability
- Global Partnership
You can find out more about the Goals here and I think you’ll agree that those are some of the world’s toughest problems. Every single student that enters the Imagine Cup must think about how technology can solve one or more of those problems and the ingenuity we are seeing from around the world is truly incredible. |
Over the next few weeks we’ll be using this blog to give you an insight into the incredible world of the Imagine Cup as we build towards the world finals in Egypt.
If you can’t make Cairo, then this will be a great place to get a flavor of the excitement, tension and color of the world’s leading student technology competition through videos, photos, guest posts and much more.
You can also follow our Twitter feed (imagine_cup) for the very latest news and resources.
Welcome to the journey to the 2009 Imagine Cup finals. It’s going to be a wild ride and we can’t wait to see how it comes out.
Joe
Joe Wilson
Senior Director, Academic Initiatives
Microsoft Corporation
