The 2007 installment of Microsoft’s premiere student technology competition, the Imagine Cup (check out the ad @ YouTube), will be drawing to a close later this year in August when finalists for the Software Design invitational congregate in Seoul, South Korea to determine who will take home the Cup.
The team representing Pakistan this year in the Software Design category hails from LUMS. The 4 man Team AVRiL’s (Automated Video Recording of Lectures) project is about “promoting distance learning programs by reducing the cost of recording lecture videos by removing the human element from the process”. (team profile)
Check out their promo on YouTube:
They’re up against 55 other finalists in the Software Design invitational, so they’ve got their work cut out. Last I talked to one of the team members, they were working on adding the final bells and whistles, as the main core is mostly complete. I’ve had the opportunity of working with a couple of these guys in the past at LUMS; with Yahya during the CodinGuru 2006 and a couple of courses and met Tayyab during Softech ‘06, and I think they’re the best bunch from the 2007 batch at LUMS to be representing Pakistan at the Finals.
I wonder if they’ve got bigger plans for their project after the Imagine Cup. It would be great if they work with LUMS on a customized solution for the campus. During my Senior year at LUMS, I had a course that was having its classes recorded, and having an automated system would be a lot better (and cheaper). Maybe LUMS could provide lecture videos and course material at subsidized rates (or free) to online users (something along the lines of OCW) or provide this material to other schools and colleges for people who can’t afford that quality of education, or maybe strike a partnership with VU or AIOU. I hope team AVRiL can shed some light on their plans.
The planned Microsoft .NET Application Security Seminar was held on time (3:30) on Wednesday, 26th April 2006. The speakers were Mr. Rai Yawar and Mr. Kashif Akram. Mr. Akram first started his presentation on implementing security in .NET applications, covering both desktop and ASP.NET applications. He also focused on the one click deployment feature in .NET 2.0. Mr. Rai Yawar then followed, focusing on protecting distributed systems from hack attacks. He also focused on WSE 3.0.
Attendance wasn’t as high as expected, which is sad, since I was really excited about the topic of the Seminar, and expected people would be too. Security is an issue not covered extensively in academic material that we are taught.
At the end of the event, goodies were distributed amongst the audience and the speakers, since there were more goodies than the people left at the end of the event.
The Microsoft .NET Application Security Seminar has been scheduled to be held on the 26th of April (coming Wednesday) in LUMS (A-13 Auditorium). The event will inshallah start at 3:30pm and should go up till around 5:30. The speakers weren’t given a lot of time to prepare for the event, just 2-3 days, so I hope they can come up with good content, and top their presentations that they gave in the Launch. Mr. Rai Yawar will be returning to give a presentation, and we will also be having a speaker from Multilynx, a Microsoft Partner in Pakistan.
Would have been nice if Mr. Saqib Ilyas were speaking, since people at the Launch liked his presentation…
With Bolan (LUMS crappy mail server) down most of the time these days, I’m having a hard time advertising about this event. I guess I’ll have to rely on user groups and going to students and facultly members individually to get them interested about the event. As always, students from FAST are interested in attending the event, and I’m hoping to seeing quite a few of them at this seminar as well.
Gonna have to go into turbo mode for the next couple of days, deadlines are piling up really quickly … wish me luck for the event people! (And if you’re in lahore on the 26th, COME!!!) ^_^
Since most of us are entering the job market these days (yours truely included), we’ve been scurring around trying to apply for every eligible job possible.
People in Pakistan can apply at Microsoft by sending their Resume’s to pakcv@microsoft.com. Be sure to check out this post on Microsoft’s job blog, which contains instructions on what to write in your resume. Be sure to check related items in the left column on this page, which contains interview tips and other useful stuff.
Good luck to all who are applying for work this year!
By next week (by the 25th of April), we’ll be having a .NET Security related Microsoft seminar at LUMS inshallah. Still have to get the time and place reserved, and work on the advertising. The last Microsoft event, Launch 2006, went pretty well, hope this one goes even better.
Haven’t met the speakers yet, and don’t know what exactly they’ll be talking about, but should be fun. Looking forward to this one.
My hopes of a LUMS team going for the Software Design invitational at the Imagine Cup this year hit a snag today. Ali Abdullah’s group was planning on sending their .NET 1.1 project for the competition, but they’ve run into problems while converting it into .NET 2.0 :/. I’ll probably get together with them tomorrow, and figure out a solution.
