Four DIT students found that a technology competition in Poland was 'transformative', writes KARLIN LILLINGTONin Warsaw

ON A SUNDAY evening in Poland, hearing the word “Ireland” means everything right now to four students from the Dublin Institute of Technology. Ten country names are to be called out in a room in central Warsaw charged with excitement.

Hundreds of students have spent hundreds of hours working tirelessly on technology projects to get to this moment at Microsoft’s Imagine Cup, one of the largest international technology competitions for university students.

The competition, now in its eighth year, has an unusual twist in that it has a social dimension. Students are asked to find technology solutions to address global issues. This year, they’re to consider ways of solving “the world’s toughest problems”.

All the teams here have already won their national Imagine Cup competition. Many of the projects are sophisticated and professional; some are ingenious. New Zealand has a way to upload computer content and system updates via radio signal. Thailand has a “Braille eye” for guiding the blind. Korea has a system for easily registering children to help prevent exploitation and abuse.

The Irish project in the cup’s centrepiece software design category, carrying $25,000 in prize money, is a musical beam of sound called ImagiNote, for therapy work with disabled children.

It has been extremely popular with other students and many Microsoft staff.

The buzz is that it will go through in this first brutal cut, when only 10 teams of 62 will get through to the next round.

Earlier in the day, the Irish team – Nikola Nevin, Marco Castorina, Philip Kavanagh and Jonathan Lynch – gave a solid performance before the four judges evaluating their demonstration. They were confident and engaged, and each judge told them he loved the project. The judges stayed on to play with the sound beam themselves, seen by the students as a good omen.

On the other hand, they had numerous questions on the team’s business plan and the cost of the project’s components. The Soundbeam is commercially available but costs a daunting €1,000 or so. Is that too high a barrier? A good save is made by Lynch.

He notes that this is not a significant one- off cost for a special needs school or clinic and that many actually already have Soundbeams, including Dublin’s Central Remedial Clinic.

Other team members say they really want to port the project to Microsoft’s recently announced Kinnect gaming technology which lets people interact with games through motion. They say ImagiNote could potentially work with a laser beam rather than Soundbeam.

The students are happy after and feel they gave it their best shot. “They asked us a lot about goals and a business plan. We had good answers but I think we need to have that in the presentation if we go through,” says Nevin, the irrepressible final-year computer science student whose original project this was.

Some tentative plans for adjusting the presentation are made. If they go through, they could have to present to judges again as early as 10am the next day.

Team adviser and DIT computer science lecturer Bryan Duggan decides they should wait till after the evening announcement of the semifinal teams before doing more.

Now the moment has come. Whoops go up as various teams learn they are through. New Zealand, Thailand, the Netherlands, the UK. They tick down to three teams left. Two. Then one. Then it’s over: Ireland is not called.

The team are expressionless with disappointment. There are hugs and some tears and they head out for consolatory drinks.

By the next day, they are back on form, cheerful and buoyed by the supportive comments of fellow competitors. Back at their display booth in the afternoon, they get visits and encouragement from other judges, who feel they have a potential product, and are interviewed for Polish radio and television, all of which boosts spirits.

All feel the event has been an important milestone for them, despite bowing out in the first round. First, there’s the confidence gained in doing presentations before an audience, something which all say they initially found terrifying, and then, “confidence in the project itself”, says Castorino.

Kavanagh agrees. “We learned that actually, the commercial appeal is potentially huge,” he says.

He says he has had his eyes opened to the whole area of using software and other technologies for assisting people with special needs, something he had never thought about before.

The potential power of teamwork impressed Lynch: “I really learned about the viability of a small group of people, the ability to get something done.”

All say that developing a project in this way has pushed them to think about the possibilities of creating a company, or developing further project ideas.

Microsoft Ireland academic engagement manager Michael Meagher, who has accompanied the students, is crushed that the team is out but notes the positives.

“For our students to have pitted themselves against the best in the Irish system is already an achievement and, by the time, they are here, they are already winners.”

Team adviser Duggan is disappointed for his students and for himself, but adds that the Imagine Cup’s focus on social issues is transformative for the students, who tested and developed the project with Irish schoolchildren.

“Working with Enable Ireland and special needs schools on ImagiNote has really opened their eyes and made them more socially aware and socially conscious,” he says. “They also get a great sense of self-confidence and this builds their presentation skills, and they still have plenty of opportunities with this project.”

The students, who will get mentoring from Enterprise Ireland, are already thinking about what needs to be done next with the project.

“I’d like to see it developed further, so we can bring it back to the schools as a real product,” says Nevin.

“Yeah,” says Lynch. “So we can bring it back and say, ‘this is what you helped make’.”