Aug 12 2007
High calibre students
Still a bit groggy this morning after the long return journey from Korea, but much the better for 8 hours of sleep.
The Irish students from Maynooth and DIT really shone and did the country proud in Seoul. The web development team of Marouf Azad and Mohammed Al-Tahs took a fantastic second, with $4,000 in winnings, in that very grueling 24-hour programming competition at Seoul. The Maynooth lads just missed out on the top three placings in the Cup (though they had been favourites to take one of those slots!), but did win one of the three places on the Innovation Accelerator program to take place in Redmond probably early next year. If anything this is the GREATER achievement IMHO -- because it meant that the most hard-nosed group of judges, the business, VC-focused guys from BT, believed their project was one of three out of 55 to most merit professional support towards commercialisation (by contrast the final judging panel had some less technical people such as a UNESCO official). The accelerator award is high praise indeed for some very innovative and thoughtful programming and application design.
I was really proud to be able to cheer both teams from the floor of the giant hall in Seoul as they went up to get their awards, draped in those embassy tricolours. Meanwhile Microsoft Ireland's representative at the event Liam Collins (oops! edited to correct this to CRONIN; I shouldn't type when jetlagged) found himself increasingly popular and recognised by other Microsoft people at the event due to the calibre of the Irish teams and the increasing likelihood of a top win, as the week progressed. He says he was frequently asked how he'd managed to pull this off given it was Ireland's first year in the competition (some colleges/universities and countries are well familiar now with the competition having sent teams every year for five years -- this really helps give an edge towards winning as you know what to aim for on presentations and so forth).
He had a simple answer: "Amazing students, amazing talent."
One response so far
And congrats too to Tom Lysaght (Team InGest Mentor).