Two years ago I started this blog with a post about the Imagine Cup – a worldwide software competition for students that I was taking part in at the time. I posted several times about our journey through the competition – and eventual success at the UK finals.

The competition was a truly amazing experience – I leaned a lot about the industry as a whole, as well as some of the technologies I worked with, and I formed some valueble contacts that eventually helped me when it came to finding my feet in the IT industry.

The team at Microsoft have just kicked off the 2010 Imagine Cup competition, and so I thought it only fitting to share the information – please pass it on to any students you know, as it’s a really lifechanging thing to be involved in!

The Imagine Cup is the worlds largest student technology competition with thousands of the best and brightest students from around the world competing for the opportunity to represent their country at the international finals (this year to be held in Warsaw) and ultimately win in their category.

The competition has four categories this year:

Software Design

This year, Microsoft has worked with some of the UK’s leading charities to provide you with a selection of project briefs to form the basis of your entry. There’s a good range of briefs all addressing real world problems identified by partner charities. I would really recommend using these briefs (although this is not compulsory) as they will get you off to a flying start.

You can find out more and download the project briefs here.

Game Design

As ever, Microsoft are predicting that Games Design will be a very popular category this year. The competition is largely the same as last year but with one key difference – you can now use either XNA or Silverlight to build your game.

Microsoft are also planning on running a series of X48 type events where all entries would be submitted as Round 1 entries – details to follow.

Find out more about the Games Design competition here…

Digital Media

The Digital Media competition is designed for your team to create a video as interesting and as enticing as possible so that people want to pass it on, share it, and get the entire world to vote for it.  The videos that become the most viral – win! This is a chance for those who’ve always enjoyed creating videos and multimedia experiences, to develop one that can change the global community.

Visit the Digital Media competition page to learn more.
 

IT Challenge

IT Challenge highlights the art and science of developing, deploying, and maintaining IT systems that are efficient, functional, robust and secure. You, as a growing IT professional may think you have the base set of tools and techniques, but are you ready to consider a customer’s unique needs and configurations that will make all of the pieces of a specific system fit together?

Visit the IT Challenge competition page to learn more.

Now is the time to jump in so check out the UK site, register and compete – good luck!