I’ve finally managed to find a spare 5 minutes and I'm sitting here pretty shell shocked in the Hilton Hotel in Sao Paolo reflecting on what is the last day of a frenetic week at the Imagine Cup worldwide student programming finals. It has been a truly momentous, memorable and at times a pretty mad experience. It all started last Thursday with Gavin and I and Team Faraday (aka the UK Imagine Cup finalists Ali, Andy and Mat or the “kids”) being waved off from Heathrow Airport with a photo call which included 2 bikini clad Brazilian models.
After the 11 hour flight to Sao Paolo we then caught an internal flight up to Foz de Iguacu on the Brazil, Paraguay and Argentine border. Renowned for being the home of the highest and probably most impressive series of waterfalls (Niagara and Victoria are apparently miniscule trickles in comparison); this week Foz de Iguacu became the home from home for over 150 students from 39 different countries for the final stages of the Imagine Cup 2004.
So in true student fashion Team Faraday pulled it out of the bag as let’s say that they had left things rather to the last minute. They made it through to the very final stages and finished in the top 12 with their smartphone/web application – theJuice – which aims to "squeeze the most out of student life". As surrogate parents I can honestly say that Gavin and I felt immensely proud of them all plus it was a phenomenal showing from Europe with 9 of the top 12 teams coming from the region with France being crowned overall winners of the Software Design Challenge.
Gavin and I have just seen the “kids” off to the airport and I’m actually pretty choked; whilst they didn’t manage to secure one of the top 5 places, they were outstanding; they were definitely the cheekiest of teams keeping us on our toes the whole time and aside from the serious business of the SDC they relieved the tension by playing a number of pranks on us. Imagine going back to your hotel room at some unearthly hour of the morning after one or two Caprioskas AND discovering your door barricaded with a mountain of Strawberry softdrink cans AND Andy and Mat lying on the floor in fits of hysterics filming your every reaction with a video camera.
If you want to get a taster of what the Imagine Cup 2004 was all about, check out Ian’s blog; Ian is from Birmingham University and was a judge at both the 2003 and 2004 finals and spent his very limited free time as the unofficial event photographer. So roll on next year’s finals which will take place in Yokahoma, Japan where we would just love to see a UK team in the top 5… no pressure then!