Imagining solutions to Philippine problems

MICROSOFT Imagine Cup Philippines national finalists

NATIONAL champion Team Studio Soil’s Alonzo, Maningo, De Vera and Valdez

Imagine a room filled with young people in distinctive Filipiniana outfits but tinkering with new technologies and innovations they themselves created.

This was the scene at the recent Microsoft Philippines Imagine Cup local finals held at Blue Leaf Filipinas in Parañaque City.

Techie students from different universities in the country competed for the top prize of P50,000 in each category and a chance to represent the Philippines in the Microsoft Asia-Pacific Regional Finals Cup by creating new computer applications in three categories: games, innovation and world citizenship.

Team Studio Soil of students from the University of the Philippines Manila and De La Salle-College of St. Benilde won in the game category.

The team, composed of childhood friends Juan Miguel Maningo and Justin Chester Valdez, Krystel Lizzette de Vera and Patricia Marie Alonzo, also won the Edupro Choice Award, which entitled them to a free Information Technology (IT) training and certification.

Maningo and Alonzo were last year’s Philippine representatives to the Microsoft Global Cup in Seattle, Washington.

Game for the environment

LIM, WITH Joel Garcia, DX lead Microsoft Philippines

Team Studio Soil created the game Sprout, an adventure-platform and tower manager on Windows 8.1 Platform. It is a fun and exciting game app with colorful visuals that teaches the player how to protect and preserve the environment.

“This app is our friendship output. The message of the game is to preserve the environment while we still have time. The main character has to revive the trees as he travels through the forest. We came up with a game [where a parallel] world [to the one] we have now is put in the game, teaching them (the players) methods to protect and preserve the environment,” the team said.

In the innovation category, the winning team created an application for the medical field, specifically Physical Therapy.

Named Recupera, the app provides a “gamified” home rehabilitation procedure using the latest Kinect sensor (software enables body and voice recognition from the Kinect sensor). The student innovators were from De La Salle University: Renz Paolo Abergos, David John Ricafort, Maria Luisa Sebastian and Edwill Dave Tan. This team also won the Edupro award.

“This is a Web-based therapy application you can view as long as you have Internet connection and a computer. [It provides] details about a patient’s bones and other personal information, and his/her medical record. The physical therapist can also see the progress of the patient. It [gives a] detailed view of what the patient is doing with the app. With this, the therapist can customize the exercise of the patient,” the team explained.

TEAM Recupera’s Sebastian, Abergos, Ricafort and Tan

A “one-man” team topped the World Citizenship Category, which required participants to find a solution to a problem, even their own, that affected many people.

Charles Justin Lim had to present the winning app by himself because his partner Sean Rafanan was absent on contest day. The Ateneo de Manila University student also received the Best Booth award and the Edupro choice award for his entry, Project Sing.

Lim said Project Sing was a mobile app that aimed to debunk the notion that a person who could not sing was tone deaf. A specialized module would train the user to recognize and sing notes correctly.

Lim said he really loved music but because his family was very business-minded he did not have the chance to practice his singing.

“I wanted to get some voice coaching but I didn’t have the money and the time. So I did some research and came up with this app,” Lim said.

Even a person who thought he/she could not sing could learn through practice, he said. “And this is what this application is about. This solution is already out there, being offered by voice coaches, but people don’t have the money or the time. This app is free for everyone.”

Joel Garcia, the Developer Experience (DX) and Evangelism lead of Microsoft Philippines who gave the opening remarks, lauded this year’s participants for their innovative projects. He said he was looking forward to a wider participation in the Imagine Cup in the next five years.

In his message to the students in this year’s national Imagine Cup finals, Monchito Ibrahim of the Department of Science and Technology Information and Communications Technology Office said creating ideas was not just about winning in competitions like the Microsoft event but also about creating real life solutions for real life problems.