Imagine Cup Innovation Accelerator

Thanks for all the fish

Sitting in the hotel lobby, waiting to be collected to take me to the airport.  It's been a real rollercoaster ride for both the teams and the staff.  The final two days were pretty manic, so now I've remembered to breath, let me fill you in.

On Monday, Chris Gill from San Hill Angels, brought along three VCs from Silicon Valley to watch the team presentations and give feedback to them.  This was a pretty big deal, it was Presidents Day here in the US, so these guys were giving up their free time to be here, and it was a great experience for the teams to pitch in front of VCs with experience. 

The VCs point scoring was so very close, but Mexico came out on top, demonstrating how far the Mexican team had come considering they had thrown away their application when they arrived here two weeks ago.  Poland came in very closely during the VC pitch, and it was apparent that the Polish team had made an impression on the judges on the final day as they took a landslide 'virtual dollar' investment which pushed them to the top of the standings.

So Poland won the 'business readiness' award with the largest virtual dollar budget at the end of the competition.  There was one more award to give out, and after discussions with the BT staff and final day judges the innovation award went to South Korea. 

We really felt that the South Korea team had really come the furthest, and had applied the business learning to their presentations.  We also felt that the product they had built could make a huge difference to so many peoples's lives.

I hope everyone had a great time over these few weeks and that for those reading this blog, I hope you found this useful and interesting.  I'll continue to post videos and photos from the event, so stay tuned....

Thank you MS, Thank you BT, and Thank you all!

We met two weeks period is a short period of time.

But I am see and learn will never forget.

Thank you for two weeks.

Go back home safely.

I don't know when to meet again. But I believe that we could meet again.

Thank you MS, Thank you BT, and Thank you all!

Good bye~

PS>>

If you want to receive photos, send your e-mail to me.

My e-mail address is telius07@nate.com (It's main) or telius07@naver.com

My MSN ID is casio3626@hotmail.com

Photo size is very big... Wow.. But don't worry.

Address to send large attachments.

Oh.. one more...

I want a movie that is rest of the movie about ICIA. Thanks.

VC's are cool

Perhaps in a real life pitch VC's would have critized us to death, this time they were quite groovy

We just finished our business pitch, and to be honest we believe that we did quite well! So the Mexico team coming back from the ashes is going to kick ass! (after all we just had less than 2 weeks to create something from scratch)

Well it was really interesting and exciting standing in front of 5 serious business people, it was an experience that I personally enjoyed a lot!

Here's the first slide of our pitch:

 

Shared View similar to One Space?

"Microsoft SharedView is a fast, easy way to share documents and screen views with small groups of friends or coworkers; anytime, anywhere. Use SharedView to put your heads together and collaborate - create, convey, and communicate…across physical boundaries, through firewalls, and down to the smallest details."

Even does the "multiple mice on one screen" piece, with up to 15 participants in a session. Nice.

http://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=94

Irish team make their first million

At 2pm Pacific Time, today, Thursday Febuary 14th the Irish Team consisting of Daniel Kelly, Eric McClean, Mark Clerkin and Cathal Coffey made their first million dollars.

Ok so their only virtual dollars and technically they don’t have any value in the real world but...
Everybody has to start somewhere right?

Valentine Reply to the Irish

Excellent post Cathal!

If you could have the chocoflower delivered by a leperchaun riding a burrito I think we could make a merge and have a million dollar baby business man !!

I would also advocate on the cat's side. I'm sure there are millions of people willing to set up a romantic dinner for their cats, so here's my next business solution: FaceCat

This new and soon to be extremely popular site will let cats stare for long hours at their soul mate in 20 inches flat screen!

But Cathal's right, opportunities are always there, we just have to open our eyes. Besides, chocolate flowers seems like a good idea to me :D

Cheers mate!

Chocolates or flowers?

Today is Valentine’s Day, so what right?

If this week has thought me anything, it’s to realise a good business opportunity when I see it.

Problem: Men are always confronted with the choice on days like today whether to buy chocolates or Flowers. This age old question has long confused and frustrated men.

Solution: I propose a new product, chocolate flowers which take the hassle out of choosing.

What will get, what you got

So far, what you got? And what will get?

It is a profound and important question. ICIA has been started 10 days ago.

What you got?

Virtual money? Presentation Skills? Good Results? All right!

But, The most important thing is valuable experience.

To receive new culture, meet new people, learning new things...

These things are too good!

Initially, the language problem and the score are not good. So, I got stress. -_-;;

So, I think about what is important.

Result is how much progress has done today than it was yesterday.

I feel that advances day by day. So now I'm glad! And Tomorrow is expected.

What you got?

ICIA is six days left.

I really got a lot of things and I want to get a lot of things.

What will get?

Meanwhile, I think the conclusion of the class :

Business? It's quite simple. It's other people's money.

Technical? It's quit simple, also. It's a necessity.
But It's very difficult. This is the irony.

Bonus poto.. Today's photo capture.

Sell Benefits not Features

Ok so it goes like this.

Sell Benefits not Features. We engineers love to talk about features, basically because WE created them, and because WE believe they are cool. And yes they are cool !

Problem is, customers don't care about features, they care about benefits. By selling benefits you are selling the famous WIIFY, and connecting the buyer with the product. By selling features you're just showing off (and no one likes that).

So again we will have to change our presentation to sell benefits, not features.

In case you wonder what we look like (the mexican team), here we are riding donkeys, drinking margaritas and shooting guns (I'm the second from right to left):

Videos

The first of the videos have made it online and can be seen on the BT Podshow site http://www.btpodshow.com/video/?persona_id=327076

More videos will make it up here as and when they become available, happy watching.