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Guest post – Web Start Contest Finals
Web Start Contest is a competition in creating web start-up projects from the scratch. Students need to think of the idea, to document it an present and then to develop a project that implements the whole idea or solves greatest problems that are presented in the project plan. Read full report about Web Start Contest Finals written by Tomislav Tipuric, Technology Specialist at Microsoft Croatia.
Last Friday, 19th June, we had the final ceremony of students’ competition 2nd Web Start Contest. Event was organized on Faculty of Electrical Engineering and computing in Zagreb where 7 student teams presented their web projects that they have developed through last 3 month.
Web Start Contest is a competition in creating web start-up projects from the scratch. Students need to think of the idea, to document it an present and then to develop a project that implements the whole idea or solves greatest problems that are presented in the project plan. Microsoft Croatia organizes the competition in cooperation with students’ association eSTUDENT (http://www.estudent.hr).
Competition is organized in three rounds. In the first round students need to provide a documented project plan, in the second round they build the user experience and in the third round they are finishing the project. For every round they get points from judges which are experts in different fields.
This year’s judges were doc. dr. sc. Mislav Ante Omazic (department for Organization and management of Faculty of Economics and Business in Zagreb), dr. sc. Ivica Boticki (department for applied computing of Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb), dipl. ing. Vedran Podobnik (department for telecommunications of Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb), Viktor Marohnic (co-founder of the first Croatian Web Start-Up company Pet Minuta d.o.o.), Ivana Marsic (secretary of CRANE – Croatian Angel Network) and myself – Tomislav Tipuric, Technology Specialist at Microsoft Croatia.
24 teams applied for the competition with the average of 3 members per team, which sums up to about 70 students in this year’s competition. 7 teams went through all 3 rounds and those are the teams that presented their work at the final event.
First prize, the amount of 8,000 kn (roughly $1.500), went to DUMP Team from Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture in Split with their project eBUS. eBUS is a system that eases the usage of public transport like buses or trams using interactive maps with data regarding bus lines, stations and current location of busses in traffic. The prototype of the project is located on http://ebus.fogi.com.hr.
The amount of 4,000 kn (roughly $750) went to VM Design team from Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing for their real estates’ portal VMnekretnine (http://vmnekretnine.fogi.com.hr) with enhanced video and panoramic advertisements that create an offer which doesn’t exist in Croatian portals for real estates’ market.
Team Antzz, also from Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing won the third prize in the amount of 2,000 kn (roughly $360) with their project Anthill, innovative project management system. Users that work on project communicate through bulletin board on which they can get the personalized information about tasks that are yet to be done. The site is located at http://anthill.fogi.com.hr.
To ensure that students were equipped with adequate knowledge of technology, we organized 5 workshops with topics on ASP.NET, Database Connectivity and Silverlight that were opened to all interested students. If we look at the numbers we had about 50 students per workshop which sums up to 150 unique students that attended workshops. We also recorded the screen and voice of the presenter and exposed that to students to watch when they like on the web site of the competition. Students also had free web hosting to host their projects which was provided by INSIDE Internet (http://www.inside.hr).
Some of the teams also had a chance to attend the Innovation Accelerator, a two-week camp organized by Microsoft Croatia and Croatian Telekom (T-HT). Lecturers from the fields of business, public relations, presentation and speech abilities and also technology and development gave students the knowledge required to take their first steps in business world.
This year’s competition produced at least 3 projects which students will continue to develop until final deployment. We are all looking forward to 3rd Web Start Contest which we are going to organize next year.
By Ilija Brajkovic | June 25, 2009
Tags: events, microsoft
Category: events | Comments
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