This article represents a collection of interviews and a couple of personal interpretations related to the history of the IT Challenge.

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Short History of IT Challenge

(Name of all finalists are into a random order)

2005, Yokohama, Japan

 

1. Stefan Plizga (France)	2. Emanuel Pentescu (Romania)	3. Andreas Tomek (Austria)
Christian Meyer (Germany)	Hernan Lionel Cianfagna (Italy)	Valy Greavu (Romania)

 

Stefan Plizga is the first time winner of the IT Challenge. Also, he is the one who gave birth to the most representative gesture of the IT Challenge competition, in which you work alone all the time. When he had the opportunity to say a few words, as the winner, he called all the finalists on stage.

Later this gesture was repeated by all the winners of the IT Challenge. The gesture is transmitted from generation to generation. The significance of this gesture is: A winner can’t be a real winner without competition as his value!

 

2006, New Delhi, India

1. Andreas Tomek (Austria)	2. Valy Greavu (Romania)	3. Daniel Boteanu (France)
Florin Duca (France)	Gabriel Cristescu (Romania)	Hernan Lionel Cianfagna (Italy)

Details about 2006 Final Round on Rand Morimoto Blog: http://randsnet.blogspot.com/2009/06/imagine-cup-2006-india-blog.html

 

2007, Seoul, South Korea

1. Zhifeng Chen (China)	2. Romain Larmet (France)	3. Ilie Cosmin Viorel (Romania)
Andrei Alexandroni (Romania)	Jean-Benoit Paux (France)	Paul Wojcicki Jarocki (Poland)

Details about 2007 Final Round on Rand’s Morimoto Blog: http://randsnet.blogspot.com/2009/06/imagine-cup-2007-seoul-korea-blog.html

 

2008, Paris, France

1. Jean-Benoit Paux (France)	2. Ilie Cosmin Viorel (Romania)	3. Yan Liu (China)
Andrei Alexandroni (Romania)	Jiahui Wang (China)

 

In 2008 Thiago (aka Meme)was the was the youngest competitor in the history of IT Challenge. We liked very much like a television in Brazil did a very nice documentary about him.

Details about 2008 Final Round on Rand Morimoto Blog: http://randsnet.blogspot.com/2009/06/imagine-cup-2008-paris-blog.html

 

2009, Cairo, Egypt

1. Ilie Cosmin Viorel (Romania)	2. Wu Chang (China)	3. Miklos Cari Sivila (Bolivia)
Abdul Rauf Butt (UK)	Mike Burr (USA)	Mohamed Karim ES SKALLI (Morocco)
Roland Sárközi (Hungary)	Sébastien CUBITO (France)	Sherif Talaat (Egypt)
Thiago Cabral Valverde (Brazil)

 

The Anniversary Edition (5 years) of the IT Challenge was in the same time, the Edition with the largest number of participants in the Final Round.

In this edition appeared the first major changes in the competition: only one participant in each country in the final round; 10 finalists instead of 6.

At the same time it should be noted that in this final gathered the most active supporters of the competition: Sherif, Meme (Thiago), Roland and Cosmin, each of them with many posts on Imagine Cup Forum, nice interviews and promoting articles.

Details about 2009 Final Round on Rand Morimoto Blog:  http://randsnet.blogspot.com/2009/06/imagine-cup-cairo-2009-blog.html

 

2010, Warsaw, Poland

1. WeiQiu Wen (China)	2. Miklos Cari Sivila (Bolivia)	3. Hu Zhengbin (Singapore)
Bastien Sivera (France)	Dominik Trojnar (Poland)	Sherif Talaat (Egypt)

 

The 2010 Edition brings a new change in competition format. Due to budgetary limitations Microsoft with Head of Judges, Rand Morimoto, decided that the 2010 Final to be organized online.

We live in a world of the Internet and we have sufficiently mature tools for communication and remote working to enable such manifestations. We think that was a success and only for the fact that section went further.

Details about 2010 Online Final Round on Rand Morimoto Blog:

http://randsnet.blogspot.com/2010/07/imagine-cup-warsaw-2010-blog.html

 

2011, New York, USA

1. Jean-Sebastien Duchene (France)	2. Blazej Matuszyk (Poland)	3. Yunheng Mong (Singapore)
Alexander Wachtel (Germany)	Ionut Sinescu (Romania)	Tian Xuewen (China)

 

Back on-site, IT Challenge 2011 was really intense because there were first changes in Final Round requirements, including Azure configuration and Office 365 integration. Yon from Singapore was youngest competitor and first who fell asleep for 30 minutes in Final Round. But he manage to do all the best in last 4-5 hours of the competition and his results were really impresive. Quality of competition and competitors is becoming greater and greater year by year and Judge Role is very important and responsible in assuring a correct top of competitors. Thank’s to Rand and Chris who manage year by year all these great world wide competition.

At the Award ceremony, due to the limited time allocated to IT Challenge, Jean was unable to submit your message or to the world and at the same time there has been allowed to respect unwritten tradition of IT Challenge to call on stage all the contestants from Final Round.

Jean’s message is very impressive and deserve 2-3 minutes for reading.

Details about 2011 Final Round on Rand Morimoto Blog: http://randsnet.blogspot.com/2011/07/imagine-cup-new-york-2011-blog.html

 

What’s next?

Australia 2012! But we first must finish First Round and after that Second round.

Quiz 4 – 14 December 2011!!! http://www.imaginecup.com/Competition/mycompetitionportal.aspx?competitionId=65

 

Resources:

• IT Challenge Official page: http://www.imaginecup.com/Competition/mycompetitionportal.aspx?competitionId=65
• IT Challenge Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Imagine-Cup-IT/127052839754
• Imagine Cup Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/microsoftimaginecup
• Imagine Cup 2012 NewsPaper: http://paper.li/f-1319192195
• Microsoft Virtual Academy: http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/Home.aspx
• Learning Resources – Update 2011/2012: https://skydrive.live.com/view.aspx?cid=75A27106A7B175CB&resid=75A27106A7B175CB%212317

Good luck!