First of All, Congratulations for team Tawasol for winning the Imagine Cup local finals and qualifying to the world finals in Sydney, Australia. I wish them best of luck representing Egypt this year & I want you to support them by following their news on Facebook.
Imagine Cup Egypt this year was totally different, different in teams, ideas, judges, results & even different for me as a contestant. It’s my first time as a mentor which is another experience that added to me personally and I learned from it lots of stuff on personal & professional level. It is unforgettable.
This year I wasn’t competing as a student, I was mentoring Brains Collector, in mission of changing education & taking it to a new level using Kinect & the web.
After winning the local finals last year and qualifying to the world finals in USA, My team had lots of challenges & disappointments because of the great differences between the local and world finals. We didn’t even pass the first round in the US which is quite tough as they selected 18 teams out of 69 & because of several other factors that I believe if someone told us before we went there, we would have avoided many of them.
This was the motivation for me to become a mentor this year. I took the decision right after I came back from US but I didn’t know what should I do to select a team to mentor, I thought of approaching Microsoft Egypt & asking them to organize an intense Imagine Cup training for students & from attending such event I select the team I will mentor. I couldn’t do it because of the time pressure because if they agreed on doing so, I had to follow the whole thing up and make sure it happens on the level which I don’t have time to do.
On one Friday where I was heading to Flat 6 Labs, I got a phone call from the amazing Omar Abou El-khir asking me to join Brains Collector team as the team mentor, I asked him to give me a chance to think and get back to him but honestly speaking I was deep inside very happy & wants to accept the offer on the phone. I didn’t want to take a quick decision because mentoring is such a responsibility & it’s something I didn’t do before so I decided to take a chance to think and get back to them.
After thinking I decided to be Brains Collector mentor for 2012. I built my decision on the following factors…
The TEAM:
Diversity & integrity of the team. Brains Collector consists of four members that together builds amazing mix you can’t resist to work with, let me quote a statement about team structure in Imagine Cup from a paper written by a US professor who participated several times in the Imagine Cup:
“A mix of skillsets is optimal: technical developer, business analyst, communication specialist. On occasion, a single student may play multiple roles but it is important for all talents to be represented. For many students, the Imagine Cup competition is the first time they have had the opportunity to work in an environment that truly requires business, soft (team, communication, interpersonal, etc), and technical skills.”
The team members are:
Omar Abou El-khir: Omar is studying Computer Engineering at Cairo University, he is one of the most respected members in the Microsoft Student Partners program, & he is one of my role models in the software development field, he is a Champion in several Microsoft Technologies including Kinect & WebMatrix, & not only this but he also transferred his knowledge to hundreds of students by giving sessions about different technologies across the universities of Egypt. He –And Ahmed Refaat – was also one of the selected keynote speakers at Microsoft’s biggest event of the year “Open Door”.
Ahmed Refaat: Ahmed is in his final year in Computer Science – Ahram Canadian University. He is a great designer & he was responsible of designing all the graphics included in the games & presentations of Brains Collector. He also writes code for Windows Phone 7 & the Web.
Hossam Hassan: The Connector, & the salesman, Hossam is studying Business Administration at the Arab Academy in Alexandria. He is a MSP & a member of the Rotary Egypt NGO.
Aya Siam: Aya is studying Business Administration at the American University in Cairo, with major in Finance, she completes the business aspect of Brains Collector plus I always care about diversity in the team so having a female member gives always another perspective & point of view at different issues.
The only concern I had about the team was the fear of not being able to communicate together since each one of them is in different university! Also Hossam is Alexandrian which puts another challenge on the ability to have physical meetings.
So we have a team with all the skills needed -Technical, Business, Communication- to be a strong contestant in the Imagine Cup.
The Project:
When they called me, they already had a demo of the project which was a very good thing in such an early stage. Also the project idea seemed good to me regardless of the concerns I had which I will discuss later.
Personal Challenge:
I want my experience to travel to someone else & other people benefit from it. Add to that I dream to find Egypt one day on top of the Imagine Cup world finals which is a dream I believe it will happen one day, so why not making history?.
That’s why I decided to be part of Brains Collector!
I have lots of stuff to share & ideas for other blog posts, I hope I have enough time for them all & to make you curious some of the topics include. The winning team, the teams participated this year, the Proposal, the journey through Imagine Cup, lessons learned, & What’s NEXT?
I wish you liked the post, if you have any questions, comments, or feedback please don’t hesitate to contact me on twitter @MostafaNageeb
Thank YOU!
BrainsCollector 