Two years ago I went to World Final of Imagine Cup 2005 in Yokohama - Japan as a mentor for Indonesian team, this year I have the opportunity to be one of the judges for Imagine Cup 2007 Indonesian Final after becoming one of the reviewer. Z - Microsoft Indonesia Academic Developer Evangelist and his gang chose Bandung for this event, maybe because the majority of participants are coming from Bandung.
Together with Norman and Tahir, I have to evaluate the 14 competing participants to select the numero uno to go to World Final in Korea. Little bit about the judges, beside all of us are Microsoft MVP, we are also "player" in the IT industry. Norman is coming from vendor (Intimedia), Tahir has his own company which produces a remarkable product and I am coming from Enterprise. What a nice combination to select one team which will represent Indonesia in this world event of innovation and creativity in software and technology
Most of the participants were showing a great piece of project that match with this year theme "Imagine a world where technology enables a better education for all". Starting from the exhibition, lightning round and the final five round, these guys were giving us a hard time to select. What really amazed me is that not only they are using the state of the art technology available for Microsoft platform but also how they come up with such of idea and idealism. But, state of the art or idea or innovation was not the only thing that can send one of them to Korea. We also evaluated on how applicable and marketable their project since there will be venture capital as judges in world final. Sorry to say that only a few of these participants come up with at least a make sense way to market their project.
After debating, lobbying and voting, three of us and two additional Final Five judges – Pak Richard Menko from Research and Technology Department and Jonah Stephen, Microsoft Indonesia DPE Director – came to a conclusion that the winner of this year Imagine Cup 2007 Indonesian Final is Team Aksara from Bandung Institute of Technology. They and their project which dubbed "ABC" will go to Korea as Indonesian representative. Their solution is to enable illiterate people to learn read, write and count. Yes, they have speech recognition and handwriting recognition in concert with MultiPoint SDK that make their solution is not only cool but also low cost since one computer can be shared by multiple people thanks to MultiPoint.
What makes them the winner is not only that their software is damn good and economic but also how the team can change the judge perspective in Final Five. Frankly they were not that impressive on Lightning Round and they even didn't make as one of the judges favorites when they qualified for Final Five round. But they did it. When people of their age were going to movie or dinner or just cruising around Bandung (it was Saturday night), I believe all members of Team Aksara gathered around probably in lab to change their presentation and perfecting the project. On the next day they came up with such presentation that impresses most of the judges especially me. Their proposal on business model made sense and their demo with cheap writing pad concurred with their target of delivering a low cost solution.
So, Desi Hadiati, Mohamad Octamanullah, Riza Ramadan and Budiono congratulations on your success, although we the judges still think that if you can change the aim of this ABC to young kids or people learning new language instead of poverty and adult illiterate will have a better impact, you guys are deserve to go to Korea and please, do raise our flag there. One thing that I can share with you as an ex-Imagine Cup participant is enjoy the competition there. You will meet other bright students from other countries, make friend while competing with them, learn new culture and don't forget to kick some ass! :)