Imagine Cup 2008 – Day Zero

Gentlemen, start your engines….!!!!!!!!

Yesterday (Thursday the third) all the teams started to arrive, so the hotel got packed with students from every part of the world. More than 60 different cultures in the same place at the same time, all with great skills and talent to develop software solutions that can change the world!!! You can feel the adrenaline in the place….all teams are really focused, working till late (some of them didn’t get to sleep at all….perfectionists..jeje).

The “ambiance” is great…Quicksilver lounge, coffee and goodies everywhere…lots of XBox 360’s (I lost 4 matches of Eurocup 2008 to Pablo, the Academic Developer Evangelist for Microsoft Argentina).

The backstage is very complex and are all very busy as well….there are so many things to take care of…..more than a thousand people that need food, transportation, 9 categories, judges, press (there are over 200 press members here).

Yesterday morning I had some time off so I went for a quick view of the Eiffel Tower (just 5 blocks away from the hotel) and Hotel Des Invalids…both reaaallly impressive! I can feel a lot of Paris influence in Buenos Aires, so I I’m feeling quite comfortable.

In the afternoon I had the judges briefing where they explained us all the schedule and regulations, and where I got to meet other judges from different categories.

Then we got all dressed up for the opening ceremony at “Marie de Paris”, something like the “Paris City Hall”…What a wonderful building!!! It looked like a mini – Versailles, just in front of Notre Dame. Gourmet Food, Speeches from MS representatives, a whole lot of chanting and excitement from the competitors….it was all good.

Afterwards we went back to the hotel to help with the organization of the schedules and making sure everything was ready for today!

 

You can check more about the competition with the live coverage of channel 8 (http://channel8.msdn.com) 

Till the next post!

Allez la France – Imagine Cup 2008 – Day minus 1

Hi All, as a grand opening for my blog I’m going to write a live set of posts from the beautiful city of Paris, France, about my role and experiences at Imagine Cup 2008 (www.imaginecup.com), the world’s premier student competition around technology.

Last year together with my partners Nacho, Maxi and Sally, I participated in the worldwide finals of Imagine Cup 2007 at Seoul, South Korea, representing the South Cone Region. It was a wonderful experience, so I decided that I would love to keep involved for the years to come. That’s why earlier this year I wrote a letter to Microsoft Corp. to be considered as a Judge in the Software Design category. A few months later I received the official confirmation that after completing the evaluation and review process I had been accepted as a judge =)

So here I am….I’ve just arrived to Paris and checked into the hotel where the competition will take place.  Although it’s summer here, the weather today is cool and cloudy, with sporadic showers of rain.

I took a shower while contemplating the Eiffel Tower and the Sena River from my room’s window (YEAH), and afterwards I did the basic “ground reckon”. There is a “backstage feeling” right now, as everybody is getting everything ready for the competition kick off (tomorrow).  Right now I’m in a room packed of Microsoft employees and assisting crew working their ass off to make this a great Imagine Cup!

I’m gonna go to have some dinner right now and taste my first cup of Paris!!!!

After tomorrow things are going to be really crazy around here, so I’m going to enjoy it as much as I can.

Til my next post!

Hello Blog!

Wellcome all to my (new) blog. I’ve kept several blogs in the past, including one @ Windows Live and one @ Blogger.com, but I’ve decided to unify them into this one (except from my pictures, which I will continue to upload to my Windows Live Space because there are already a lot of them there and I’m too lazy to migrate them to Picasa or Flickr.

It’s a real challenge, at least for me, to find a way to keep this blog interesting and updated with cool stuff. I promise I’ll do my best to write about my company (Wormhole IT) thoughts, ideas, plans, tips&tricks and news around the world of developing software and Information Technology.

As you probably already noticed, I’ve decided to write this blog in English so people around the globe can understand it as well! I will incorporate automatic translation to Spanish and other languages some time from now.

Well, that being said…..I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I do writing it.