The eagerly awaited event “Microsoft Imagine Cup 2023 IDEATHON Kathmandu” finally took place on December 31 at British College Kathmandu. The event was successfully organized by Microsoft Technical Communities led by Nepal Cloud Professionals, in collaboration with Microsoft Tech Communities – Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors (MLSA), Microsoft MVP & supporters – Girls In Tech Nepal, Adex International, CSITAN, Techpana and ICT Frame. An overwhelming number of attendees flooded in as soon as the registration process started . As scheduled, the event commenced at 2pm NPT .
Participants registering for the event (left) and event hall full of attendees (right).
The event was sub divided into several agendas and panel of experts and mentors presented their amazing sessions.
He spoke about The Imagine Cup and what the students should take away from the Ideathon.
The second session of the day featured Prabhat Mannapperuma, Partner Technology Strategist at Microsoft, who connected with us remotely through Microsoft Teams. He discussed the Imagine Cup, a competition for students to develop cutting-edge technology solutions, and provided guidance on how to effectively form a team. He also offered tips and advice to attendees interested in participating in the competition. The session was very beneficial and productive.
Prabhat talking guiding students about the Imagine Cup (left) and a participant clearing his doubs (right).
Arjun Gautam,Open Tech Community as community coordinator, Open Knowledge Nepal as Tech Advisor & Corpola Tech as Product Lead ,discussed methods for developing creativity and how we an be a creative thinker. He explained how “Six Thinking Hat” technique can amplify the creative conversation. There was also an active interraction between the experts/mentors and the attendees in the event .
Arjun Gautam discussing the ways of being a creative thinker
Pradeep Kandel, Lead of Microsoft Imagine Cup Ideathon showed attendees how they can leverage azure for students for building a winning app on Imagine Cup.
He also gave hands-on experience of Azure platform by calling one of the attendee upon the stage and guiding him to signup on Azure and navigate through several Azure services .He guided the attendee to build a virtual machine on Azure by using the Azure for Students Subscription.
Attendees getting hands-on experience of Azure platform by Pradeep Kandel
Pratik Sapkota, Cloud Consultant at Rapid Circle talked about leveraging AI and ML Azure in Imagine Cup project. He presented the demo of “speech to text ”application using Congnitive Service of Azure .
Pratik Sapkota gicing the session on Leveraging AI and ML (left) and an attendee being part of the demo “speech to text” application. (right)
Another insightful session was delivered by Pranisha Shrestha, Head of Marketing — Operations Dogma Group, where she discussed about marketing a product . She discussed about some key steps of marketting like knowing the key feature of the product, researching upon the rival product, identifying the age group of the users and using the appropriate marketing platform.
Pranisha Shrestha discussing about product marketing
Nishan Aryal, CEO and Founder — Innovation Lab, Technical Consultant to Department of Industry, Nepal Government discussed about Problem Solving Approach and did Brainstorming among attendees. This was the time when the IDEATHON began. He divided the attendees among 10 teams and the 10 teams were assigned with the task to discuss about a problem and think of a project idea that could solve that problem.Each team was provided with a mentor.
Nishan Aryal discussing about “six thinking hats” (left) and an attendee sharing his experience of solution finding through his hackathons participations. (right)
Mentors sharing their expertise with their mentees so the mentees can ask them for the relevant solutions.
Finally, it was time for breakout session. Refreshments were provided to the attendees . Attendees had brainstroming session accompanied with refreshments.
Top tech experts from the community were mentoring the teams and helping the attendees shape their raw idea into a problem solving project.
After some 10–20 minutes of discussion, every team came up with a project idea . Each team got a minute to present their innovative idea to the mentors.
The panel of mentors picked top three teams out of ten teams.
Laxman Pokhrel, MERN Stack Developer | Beta MLSA | NCP Board Member | Computer Engineering Student discussed about “Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador ” program and encouraged the attendee to apply for the program .
After the session we had some photo sessions too.
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