I
magine Cup is an annual event for university students across the world. It is an event where students develop whatever they have decided to from games to music and other applications and the best were awarded with cash prizes. During my second year at Birmingham City University, one of the modules was designed in such a way that it infused the Imagine Cup event and so you had to participate in the event in order to pass the module. Seven teams took part in the event from Birmingham City University and there were three to four students in each team. We worked together for about 4 to 6 months to create a game and published it on the Imagine Cup website for the event and we also created a 2-minute long trailer for the game and uploaded it to YouTube. The reason the module was designed at BCU to infuse this event was to test the team working skills of students and see how well they would perform in such an environment as opposed to working individually.
BCU Imagine Cup 2013 Finalists with Natasha Joseph from Microsoft
This was a very challenging experience for me as I was in a team with colleagues who were intelligent and everyone had their own opinion on how we should have gone about it; sometimes there were disagreements and disputes but at the end, we all learned to accommodate one another’s ideas and reach an agreeable compromise for the good of the project. Before the final event in London, there was a selection stage that took place in BCU where all 7 teams had to do a 20-minute presentation of their projects before Microsoft/ BCU staff members Jan, @PiaVan (@LaunchConf) & @tashjoseph66 and then three groups were selected to proceed to the next stage in London after which (if successful), they would travel to Russia).
The experience of having the Imagine Cup event woven into one of my modules was a very beneficial one; I learned to work with others and learned how to reach a compromise if need be so that the aim or task assigned to the group will be met.
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Ⓒ 2016 Mahmud Chowdhury