This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Microsoft MVP Award Program Blog.
Young developers often dream of changing the world with the technology they build. And Microsoft’s Imagine Cup is on a mission to empower today’s sharpest minds worldwide to do exactly that. Now in its 15th year, the global competition has motivated nearly 2 million passionate students to show-off their most innovative ideas.
We know that great ideas married with technology can make a huge impact on the way we live and work. As the MVP Program is on a mission to inspire technical leaders everywhere, we're always excited to recognize students excelling with Microsoft technologies.
In this, we’d like to congratulate this year's Imagine Cup champion, Team X.GLU from the Czech Republic! This acclaimed group of three university students developed a life-altering solution: they combined hardware and Microsoft Azure cloud to build a platform that helps diabetics better manage their symptoms.
And their hard work has certainly paid off. Team X.GLU wins a whopping $100,000, a trip to the 2018 Build developer conference, a $125,000 Azure Grant, and a once in a lifetime mentoring session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Tens of thousands of students spent months building solutions for the competition, however after country-wide National Finals, just 54 teams from 39 countries were chosen to head to Seattle. Representing some of the most noteworthy computer science schools globally - including Stanford University, Oxford University and Tokyo University, to name a few - the teams went head-to-head for two days to show off their big and bold ideas.
After intense competition, just four teams won the chance to contend for the next Imagine Cup title - and in front of some pretty impressive judges, too. The students battled it out in front of Black Girls Code founder Kimberly Bryant, Harvard computer science professor Dr. David Malan, and Microsoft Technical Fellow and chief technology officer for Azure Mark Russinovich.
Microsoft Executive Vice President of Cloud and Enterprise Scott Guthrie announced the winner. And even grammy-award winning artist Macklemore made an appearance during the Championship Show to give the teams some words of inspiration!
To see how the competition played out, make sure to watch the Championship Show with your favorite young people - and show them how they too can change the world with technology. Check out the video above.