I’ll walk you through the entire experience of the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2008 SDI India Finals which was held at Bangalore on the 8th and 9th of May, 2008. This could help other students who took part or want to do so next year

07^th of May, 2008

Amith left his place sometime around 2 PM and picked up SaM along the way to my place. I had just picked up a flex of our Architectural Diagram only a few hours ago and with my trusty bag and a laptop (which was borrowed from one of my dad’s friends) we left to the airport. Noel was already there at the airport when we came. We were scheduled to go to Bangalore on Jet Airways on a 737 which was to take off at 17:10. All I can say is that it was an awesome experience. My first flight and it was one to remember. Sadly I had to sit in the middle seat but it was fine. I was peeping out of the window to get the most amazing of views at 39,000 feet

The flight was on time though we were the fifth to take off on that runway so the take off was 15 minutes delayed but everything else was perfect. We landed in Bangalore an hour and 15 minutes later to a beautiful climate since it was just about to rain a bit. We had a pickup for the four of us which took us to Polo Nest. Me and Amith were allotted room 203 and SaM and Noel were in 205. We dropped off our bags and went to 205 to start off with work. We paid the Rs. 300 per night charge for Internet which was something we desperately needed. At around 10 we had dinner more or less alone. The entire crowd had gone back to their rooms except for мебелиBhavik and more or less the entire Novices@Work team. After dinner we went back to work and we did so more or less for the entire night. We took shifts to sleep 2-3 hours to maintain sanity for the big upcoming day

(I had written up a huge post of the other two days but I have no idea where it went.. I don’t think I can put it all down again like I did then but I’ll try none the less. Do note that the following part is written a month later so it might not be as detailed or as much fun as the original version, where ever it is :P)

08^th of May, 2008

We got up after hardly any sleep and it was time to leave. We dressed up in our formals and made our way to a small bus which was standing outside PoloNest waiting to take us to the Microsoft Campus which was across the road. It was around 11:45 at this time. Once there, we were explicitly told not to take pics from the inside or the outside and that was disappointing cause the building and work environment were pretty awesome. We were all given visitor passes and given permission to be in the lobby, the room next to it (which was alloted to us) and the conference room (where the presentations were taking place). It was a closed presentation so no huge crowds Not even the other contestants. Just the judges. We were served lunches and then one team member from each team was asked to come take chits as to the order of presentation. I step forth. We wanted the last chit (#8) or anything closed to it and the chit I picked was #6. The golden hand strikes again

We waited for our turn and had lunch. We didn’t really want to, not that the food was bad but you don’t want to have a full stomach on such a huge event Team GRAS went in and took an entire 30 minutes to come out. We were waiting for their reactions after all, these guys were #2 in last year’s MS IC SDI India Finals What would it be? Well.. they were… laughing Was it that awesome? Not really, according to them. They said they were ripped apart on various points. Other teams followed and each got similar reactions. While all of this is going on, we’re making final tweaks to the code of the demo Not only that, we’re actually making tweaks on our roles in the presentation too Team #4 is in and we manage to patch in interoperability. The final few issues fixed, we seemed ellated. SaM and stridy decide to tweak it further while me and Noel are working out the timing in our presentations because the entire thing has to be highly timed. There was a strict time limit of 10 minutes.

Me and Noel finish our timing and are pleased. We walk over to SaM and stridy just to hear stridy yelp “Oh shit.. Interop is broken :|” and just then.. literally just then.. Deepak walks in and says “Team SKAN, you’re up. Lets go.” We’re like “Oh crap.. improvisation time :P” We go in and straight out of the box, one of the gentlemen from IIM (if my memory serves me correct, it was Mr Kunal Upadhyay, CEO of CIIE at IIM-A) asks us if we’ve implemented all of this on our own and we’re like.. “ummm.. yeah :P” We start the presentation and everything flows well. SaM comes up and takes a bit too long oh his part. I’m looking at my watch and its 8 minutes gone and we’d need about 4 more minutes We manage to some how wrap it up and still do all the parts as required. Here comes the dreaded QnA where the other teams were murdered. To be honest, it wasn’t that bad for us. We did pretty darn well. In fact, we were applauded once the entire thing was over. We were the only team who got such a response

The other teams go in and the story continues. At the end of the day we leave to go to Garuda Mall where we printed our “Team SKAN” tees I also met Aroj, Amith’s brother, for the first time. We then went on over to ThoughtWorks in Diamond District and had a look around. I must say, that’s a place I wouldn’t mind living at The ride home was funny because the auto guy took us to a whole different place. The receptionist at PoloNest was kind enough to explain to the guy in Kanada where to come. Our auto guy then started telling the receptionist that this will cost extra fare and we’re like.. “just take us there please. We’ll pay you the extra amount” :p

We reached there by 11ish and soon turned to bed. A long day ahead and we were really tired.

09^th of May, 2008

Quite an early start and we were off to the Nimhans Center (hopefully spelt correctly). The place was quite nice. We set up a stall where MSPs from around Bangalore came to check out all our solutions. It was fun Quite a few professionals and even Microsoft Employees from South East Asia (Thailand, I believe) came towards the end. Nice 2 hours of stall running and explanation of our system meant we were ready for the presentation and a wide range of questions At noon, the results came out. (Note, my thoughts henceforth for all result declarations are mentioned in asterix, for clear distinction)

The first team to go through to the grand stage to present and be India’s top 3 was Team GreenWaves from Delhi University. *Ok.. 2 more places left. We can still make it.* The second team to make it through to the final 3 was Team Novices@Work from VESIT *Kinda expected.. but only one place left Can we make it? If after yesterday’s awesome response we don’t make it, who knows what it takes to go through :P* The final team to go on stage will be… *drum roll here would have been nice* Team SKAN from *oh good lord yes! We’re through! The dream is still alive.. oh wait, our college’s are being mentioned. Oh well.. just keep shaking hands, hugging, jumping and smiling with glee*

The others went to eat food while we were on stage telling them what our final requirements were for when we are on stage. We were seated backstage where we redid our entire presentation strategy making sure we have enough time. We practiced our roles and mine was to man one of the computers. Amith would man the other one while Noel and Sameet presented.

Team Greenwaves went first but honestly, we were too busy to notice what had happened on stage. We were just preparing over and over again. Team Novices@Work go on next and we are getting ready to go on stage. Their QnA starts and we get ready with 3 laptops all connected to a switch (we did need a mini network there to show how the system works :p) We carry all of this and go on stage. Everything set up, the presentation is about to start. I glance up and see an packed auditorium. People eagerly waiting for us. Spotlight directly on us. This is what we’ve been waiting for

Everything goes smoothly. Noel was given 2 minutes for the outro but when SaM handed over control, there was a nice 3.5 minutes. I knew we were coasting home as far as time was concerned. Noel noticed this and deeply emphasized on every single important point. He made sure he sweet timed every single of those in coming good length deliveries. And there it was, with quite a bit of time to spare, we had just given our presentation.

QnA time and Mr. Samir Barua, the director of IIM-A who was one of the judges for the day took the mic first off and said “I don’t have any questions for you. I’d just like to know when you can come and implement this for my organisation”. We freeze and the so does the crowd for half a second and then they start applauding wildly Once the applause dies down, me and SaM thank him. Two more questions came forth but nothing which was a significant worry. Sure, when asked where we got the quoted stats from, we didn’t really remember the name of our source, but that was it. And yeah, I did look it up later and it was the Nightwatchman website :p

So its all done. Lets have food, I say. I’m starving. Well, its not that easy cause its already around 2.30 and lunch buffet is closed Well, the guys from MS who were running the show were kind enough to direct us to what I think was the executive buffet on the first floor. That’s where all the dignitories and special invitees had their lunch We enjoyed ourselves and Novices@Work were up there with us too. GreenWaves, I believe got to eat the normal lunch since they finished up first I’m so glad our team name was SKAN and not AKNS or something :p

We headed down and joined in 5 minutes late into an awesome panel discussion. (I had a nice description of this earlier but its all sketchy now so I’d rather not speculate :p I’ll just add a quote that one of the panelists had made on stage as my post ending quote :)) What you should know is, we were sitting at the back of the auditorium to its right (if you’re on stage). We’re pretty much on the last row or well.. a row or two ahead of that. In front of us was Team Novices@Work and in front of them was Team GreenWaves. Order of 1-2-3? We’d certainly hope so :p Up until now, I, if not my entire team was pretty confident. The odds of winning seemed pretty good. Then Lead India winner RK Mishra came on stage. Here’s when the graph goes all down hill :p His speech was all pro IT to help the rural areas. Could this really be happening? Microsoft India Chairman Ravi Venkatesan comes on stage.. the results are so close now. The cheques are on stage! Anyway, Ravi Venkatesan comes on stage and continues along the lines that RK Mishra had treaded. *BSE Sensex is crashing. Please switch on damage control mode already!*

The results are up. 3 cheques on stage. This is something Novices@Work pointed out. So its good that at least 3rd and 2nd place don’t go home empty handed. That’d be kind sad In 3rd place, Team GreenWaves *Safri Duo - Played Alive… I like this song.. I’d like to dance my way to the stage if we’re first :o* In 2nd place, Team *Novices@Work* SKAN *oh no.. you can’t be serious; music comes on. No dancing :(* Dejected, we go on stage and accept our 5 foot long cheque for Rs. 20,000 (which is lying in the other room as I write this; its soon to go to my college to be framed :P) and our certificates. Oh well Doesn’t take a genius to figure out who came first. Congratulations to Team Novices@Work. Have fun in Paris.

Then again, as I’m writing this after the 28th of May, I know that we’re going to Paris too so yeah, the second version of this post is a lot happier :p Pretty soon we are on our way back to Mumbai. A 2hr delayed flight later and I’m home. The dream and the trip had ended. Well the trip certainly did. The dream had a nice little reincarnation thanks to the interoperability award. More about this in my post Viva la France.

anna was kind enough to make a post about this on the AXIS forum which you can read here It has a pretty nice list of articles where this news has been published. Yesterday, on our way back, Mark told me that they had hired an agency to crawl the web and collect information about the event. I might contact them so that I can have the list that they have, just for memories sake

And yes, I am going to upload the in this millenium. I’m just waiting for my new ISP so that I can do it in less than a century Or I could just mass upload the pictures from Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Paris

Tags: Imagine Cup