Picture this! A gigantic stage in middle of the desert with no roof and no backdrop. I know … the first thing that pops to your mind is a big … WHAT! Nobody was worried about not having a roof because it’s a desert and it only rains two or three times a year and that’s also only for few minutes. But the backdrop is the real question … What good of a big stage for a world class event like this … the Olympics of technology … without a kick ass backdrop. Well! If that’s what you thought … you are wrong. We had the best possibly thinkable backdrop ever. There was history and greatness … three great pyramids of Giza was behind the stage creating a spectacular view. Now! That’s a picture you’ll never forget.

As always it is Imagine Cup award ceremony is filled with excitement, thrill, and fun and of course tears. Joe Wilson was on fire … he always is when on stage. After giving away all the awards … Soma gave the big award in the Software Design Category. Rumania won the Software Design Category.

After the grand ceremony we came back to the hotel and the farewell party things year was boring as hell. DJ was trying to run on the same beat for hours … We missed out Microsoft DJ Sang Woo from Korea.
So … after another fantastic unforgettable Imagine Cup I’m back in office back to work … doing a bit of catch up, starting work on the new financial year … etc.

In case if you are wondering what’s next in Imagine Cup … Imagine Cup 2010 World Finals will be help in Poland. Registrations are already open. So guys … go and register. Let’s have more teams from Sri Lanka and let’s win.

Imagine Cup 2009 Showcase is casing place a the moment in the Main Ballroom of the venue. We are wrapping things up in few minutes to go to the World Festival ... the big event everybody is waiting for. Joe Wilson talked about this couple of time during the last three days ... just mentioning that it is going to be super exciting ... but without of course more info.

Our teams had several short interviews with media from different parts of the world. During the showcase many Microsoft and other invitees came and checked out the solution. ADE from Singapore (Formar ADE from India) had a chat with the Software team and said 'Mahee' in Hindi means 'Sweetheart' ... aparantly its a matching name to the project ...

See ya later with updates from the world festival ...

Top 6 teams in Software Design and Embedded Development were announced last night. Both our teams didnt make it to the top 6. But ... they are already heros. Only Sri Lanka from APAC made it to the top 12 in Software Design and only Sri Lanka and Korea did the same in Embedded Development.

24 hours Algorithm Competition ended about 2 hours ago. Still couldnt talk to our competitor Aravinda to find out how did it go. He must be tired like hell.

Software Design and Embedded Development semi finals teams were announced few minutes ago. Guess what … both our teams are in.

Team SAS_EN from University of Moratuwa consisting of members Sanjaya Rathnayaka, Amila Sajayahan, Anuruddha Rathnayaka and Ruvindee Rupasinghe made it to the top 12 semi finalist teams out of the 20 teams onsite. Team Mahee from Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology consisting of members Akila Jayasooriya, Chanakya Jayasinghe, Lakkana Perera and Dunith Kankanamage made it to the top 12 teams out of the 62 teams on site.

This defiantly is a Woo! Hoo! Moment for Sri Lanka …

Tempo is still high. Round of the competitions begins in few minutes and the top 6 teams will be announced later today.

Things are all set to start the competition rounds for Software Design Embedded and Algorithm and Guess what ... Keeping up with the reputation both our Embedded and Software teams were late for the competitor briefings. Honestly I’m royally pissed about this, because I have been telling them like 10 times to be at the designated areas on time.

Top 12 teams in Software and Embedded categories will be announced in the evening. So it’s going to be a pretty tight schedule and a tuff competition to all the competitors today. That goes to our teams as well! …

Good Luck to all the competitors. It’s going to be a life changing day to many teams and individuals …

Well! Not a smooth ride at all. Flight was 1 1/2 hours delayed at the Dubai airport. Was really annoyed about this but later when the pilot explained the reason things cool down. The reason for the delay was the initially assigned flight had some technical problem and they had to switch the vessel after loading. So considering the time and effort required to unload an reload a vessel ... I think 1 1/2 delay is still pretty ok.

At the airport unlike in Dubai ... surprisingly there were no queues. There was a huge jumble of queues. Everybody was fighting to get through the health check and the immigration. There was a separate immigration counter which I think
is for foreigners and a person to handle Imagine Cup travelers ... Still it too an hour. Strange thing is the counter had a sign board as 'DIPLOMATS'. I have no clue about the processes involved in this. But this is the longest ever immigration I have ever been through. Hell! If a counter with a Diplomats board takes an hour to process ... how fast can the rest of us expect things to be faster . anyways ... finally we are here at the Imagine Cup world finals venue, Intercontinental City Stars.

Oh! I gotta mention about the traffic. It was round 10.00 PM when we arrived at the hotel. almost all the roads we travelled were blocked with heavy jams. Last night I was wondering ... if 10.00 PM @ Night is like that what could be the traffic condition @ day time. Seems like everybody in Cairo works @ night :) ... I just now looked at the roads from the hotel rooms. All roads looks clear ... no traffic jams at all. Another strange things we noticed while coming to the hotel was about 40% of the cars we saw were either scratched, or knocked at least once. Seems like driving here is like .... *(&#(!*@##$*($@% ... Reminds me of the vehicles in Chennai, India.

However thanks to all the delays we couldn’t make it to the opening ceremony :( .... but that’s ok ... according to the information received so far ... the things ahead is going to be bigger better ... especially the final ceremony.

In about an one hour we are taking off to Egypt. Seems like all the competitors are excited and on the same time nervous about the big event ahead. Well! I think they should be :) But all of them are well geared to face the big competition.

Also i'm sure everybody is looking forward to seeing the great pyramids, endless sand deserts ... etc. i'm also very much looking forward for all those. More than that competition this year is very exciting as Sri Lanka has competitors in 4 categories ... and i'm very much looking forward for that. btw: did I mention the big stage we have for big finale just in front of the pyramids.

During the next couple of days i'm planning to bring a live (as much as possible) update as time and bandwidth permits. without a doubt there will be couple of thousand photos, which I might have to wait till I get back to upload.