Going to the Imagine Cup World Finals 2014

Last week I was lucky enough to be put in contact with Guilaume and the rest of the team at Ripple. Ripple is a start-up of three students who have recently won the UK leg of the Microsoft Imagine Cup with their idea for a location based messaging app which allows you to contact people you may not know within a certain distance of your location – great for something such as freshers week where you want to meet new people.

Ripple Logo

Though Ripple have won the UK leg of the competition with their idea they are yet to have actually built the product. The three people currently involved with ripple had a great idea, but lacked the programming skills required to bring it to fruition. In order to find a student able to help them develop the application they contacted the Microsoft Student Partner program. Through the MSP program I got in touch with Ripple.

After a few Skype video conferences and telephone calls the team welcomed me on board, which means that through an odd bit of luck I am now an Imagine Cup 2014 finalist.

The Imagine Cup is a global student-only competition run by Microsoft in 190 countries which seeks to get students involved in solving social, economic and environmental problems through the use of technology. Each year winners from each country go to the world final in a different city to compete against each other – this year’s final is being hosted in Microsoft’s own back-yard, Seattle.

Imagine Cup Image of Seattle Space Needle

Winners can walk away with up to $50,000 prize money and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and current CEO Satya Nadella, so wish us luck! Regardless of how well we do I can’t wait to visit Seattle and do some of the awesome activities Microsoft has lined up for us, including going up the famous space needle.

I will, of course, keep the blog updated throughout the course of development and the competition itself.

Danny