Friday, August 1, 2014

Can Your Describe your Business in a Tweet?

Today we wrapped up another exciting Imagine Cup student competition in Seattle.  I had the honor of being a judge in the World Citizenship category, where teams from 13 countries competed.  I've written about past competitions where I saw that most technology teams had great difficulty telling us  succinctly what their project was.  As technology people, we love the details (and so do many others). So I began to ask teams to summarize their project in a tweet.  Here's what this year's contestants said:
  1. Team Access Earth from Ireland : "Access Earth is the Tripadvisor for the mobility impaired."
  2. Team The Dians from Portugal: "Super glove helps support hand recovery."
  3. Team Eyeanemia from Australia: "Take a selfie; check for anemia."
  4. Team Power of Vision from Poland: "Face controller allows you to control your computer without your hands."
  5. Team Amplifiers from Pakistan: "An affordable hearing aid solution for the population."
  6. Team Imagine the World from China: "Improve the efficiency of response teams...all can benefit."
  7. Team I Copy You from Qatar: "Come and have fun, no matter who you are and where you are."
  8. Team AfriGal Tech from Uganda: "Phone-based sickle-cell anemia test"
  9. Team Grant Fellow from the USA: "Grant Fellow redefines research #grantfellow #give-me-an-A"
  10. Team Barfoo from Serbia: "Sonochrome enables me to share photos with my blind friends."
  11. Team SMART Crew from Taiwan: "Recreating rehab for the world."
  12. Team High Rise from Nigeria: "High Rise dramatically increases cataract treatment."
  13. Team SMT from Romania: "Smile-face is an application focused on speech recovery."
Can you guess which team had a robot? Which was about a health test? Which was about a hearing impairment solution.  You get the picture. 

After the first half-dozen times I asked this question, my fellow judges tittered (sic) if not rolled their eyes.  Yet one said afterwards, the next time someone makes a presentation in my organization, I'm going to ask this question.  "Ask for a tweet; get the bottom line."  Smart :-)

By the way, the team from Australia won in their category and took home the Imagine Cup.


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