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.

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."