Sunday morning was the more relaxed day of the competition. No one was presenting to any judges on Sunday. Everyone seemed a bit relaxed. Sure they had a big announcement coming later that day, but it was time to rest.

The day consisted of the competitors going around the D.C. Office attending sessions about new Microsoft technologies. They had sessions about the KIN, NUI, .Net, Windows Phone, and plenty more. I was able to sit in on the NUI/Natal session, which was very informative and interesting.

Between sessions, I was able to catch up with Team AwesomeSauce, a game design team, and talk with them about their project:

After that, I sat in on the Microsoft Recruiting session, to learn a bit about what it’s like to interview for a technical position at Microsoft. I’m not going to go into details about that session now, but I will cover the important notes in a later blog post.

Before long, 4:20PM rolled around. I made my way to the room where the finalists would be announced, and got ready to tweet the results. During the time before the announcement, I chatted with Mark Hindsbo, General Manager of Microsoft’s Developer and Platform Evangelism for Microsoft USA, about the event. He was excited to see so many young people passionate about computer science and innovation. He felt proud to be a part of the event. Before I knew it, the time was 4:30 and the announcement had to begin.

The announcement started of with Jessica Anderson, the business manager for Microsoft Student Insiders, talking about the trip to the Newseum for the finals. Once that was done, the announced that special guest James Cameron, director of Avatar and Titanic, would be joining us for the finals at the Newseum.

Once the logistics was out of the way, it was time to announce who was going to be competing on Monday. Mark Hindsbo took center stage, announcing the top 4 SDI and GDI teams:

Software Design Teams

• Extraplaid, Utah State University
• MangoBunnies, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, DePauw University
• Mobilife, University of California, Davis
• Team Blob, South Dakota School of Mines & Technology

Game Teams

• Coffee Powered Altruism, Yale University
• Ifrit Salsa, University of Houston
• LeveL 13, University of Houston
• To Be Announced, Central Piedmont Community College

After this, each team was debriefed, and the rest of us made our way back to the hotel for some rest before another busy day.

The first day here at the Imagine Cup was pretty hectic, with competitors scrambling to make sure their presentations were ready for the judges. Each team was given a 50 minute block of time with a panel of judges, where they would demo their project, pitch their business plan, and field questions from the judges. After that, they were released from their presentation rooms to talk with the camera crews from Microsoft Press. I was lucky enough to grab a few minutes with some of the teams for a filmed interview.