Inspiring the Inspired

//This article was written for the Huffington Post on 07/17/2010

The atmosphere in Warsaw, Poland wasn’t too different than that of California. The weather was slightly humid, but temperate; the natives smiled and offered help as you wandered around aimlessly. In the hotel lobby, I was surrounded by students – individuals who I already shared a handshake and laugh with. It didn’t really feel like a competition.

Then it hit me. Within mere seconds of K’NAAN’s “Wavin’ Flag” blasting through the stage in front of Warsaw’s Palace of Culture, the crowd roared, sang along, and cheered with flags in the air. At that moment, the competition began. This was the Imagine Cup 2010 – “the Olympics of great ideas” as Bill Gates put it.

The Imagine Cup competition showcases highly innovative approaches to using technology to solve the world’s biggest problems. 395,000 students from 113 countries were said to have registered for the Imagine Cup this year. From that number, roughly 400 students were invited to Warsaw, Poland to showcase their projects in locations such as the Warsaw’s Palace of Culture and National Opera House (claimed to be the largest stage in Europe). Collectively, the teams produced projects that addressed the United Nations Millennium Development Goals ranging from helping the hearing impaired, to non-invasively diagnosing pediatric diseases using a cell phone, to ensuring environmental sustainability for future generations.

The projects were nothing but awe-inspiring and really showcased one thing: given the right tools, students have the potential to change the world. It was this message that echoed in the Opera House that night. Walid Abu-Hadba, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Developer & Platform Evangelism (DPE) group, added that the Imagine Cup is the most important Microsoft event he attends all year. “That's because I get to interact with the future,” he said. “You are the future of our industry. You are delivering the future today, and I’m proud of you all for being here.”

Although there was only one trophy to give out that night, all the competitors left with something great. Some left with the excitement of receiving the upcoming Windows Phone 7, some left with meeting requests with venture capitalists to begin funding projects, others left with media attention that shed light into the needs highlighted by their project. All, however, left inspired.

Hal Plotkin, the senior policy advisor in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of the Under Secretary, best summed up the feelings of the thousands of onlookers that night in his address: “In [President Obama’s] own words, we are the one’s we’ve been waiting for. Well, I thought that was true up until now. Now, I understand that you are the one’s we’ve been waiting for.”

Well said, Mr. Plotkin. Competitors or not, at the end of the day, we all win.