FROM
THE EDITOR
It’s time again for talented engineering students around the globe to match wits in Microsoft’s embedded systems design competition. Last year, in our “Students throw down the Gauntlet” and “Environmental Embeddedness” features – we looked at the 2006 entries. 2007’s Imagine cup, however, brings us hotter competition and more ambitious achievements from these embedded technology gurus of the future. Our latest feature has the details.
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Kevin
Morris – Editor
Embedded Technology Journal
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EVENTS
FLASH MEMORY SUMMIT -
AUGUST 7-9, 2007
MARRIOTT HOTEL, SANTA CLARA, CA
The 2nd Annual Flash Memory Summit is the only conference dedicated to flash memory and its applications. It is intended for system designers, analysts, hardware and software engineers, product marketing and marketing communications specialists, and engineering and marketing managers. It features half-day tutorials, workshops, paper and panel sessions, keynotes, roundtables, special sessions, expert breakout sessions, and exhibits. Subjects include hardware, software, design methods, consumer applications, embedded applications, computer and mobile applications, alternative technologies, controllers, programming methods, security, standards, digital rights management, and market research.
 More information
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Strengthen your skills and speed your time to market
at the ARM Developers’ Conference!
100 track sessions on embedded applications from hardware and software partners and ARM Licensees. Design centers and exhibitions on the show floor, forums and special analyst presentations, and the largest exhibition of ARM technologies in the world:
October 2-4, 2007, Santa Clara Convention Center
 More Information
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
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Free Job Postings on Journaljobs.com
JournalJobs.com – the job board for FPGA Journal and Embedded Technology Journal is now re-launching with a host of new features and capabilities. In celebration of JournalJobs.com grand re-opening, we’re offering free job postings through July 31, 2007. Go online, post a job, pay nothing, and watch for those qualified resumes to come knocking on your inbox.
 Click here to post your job listing on Journaljobs.com
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Imagine Cup 2007
Embedded Challenge Heats Up
Last year, we looked at the amazing embedded design achievements of student teams in Microsoft’s Windows Embedded Student Challenge. On impossibly short schedules, and with almost no existing infrastructure and with no previous experience in most of the development tools, these student teams put together complete working systems with custom hardware and software components, as well as marketing and product plans to assess the viability of their projects as products.
The dedication, creativity, and energy required to pull off such a feat are well beyond the capacity of most commercial product development teams. The world of benefits packages, balancing work and family life, vacation time, office politics, and industrial regulations and standards preclude the kind of fast-paced, get-the-job-done-at-all-costs, wind-in-your-face effort that these student teams (and some startup companies) are capable of generating.
This year, the scale of the competition has gone up significantly. Microsoft has chosen to move the venue of the embedded design competition into the “Imagine Cup” – a broad-based, worldwide student competition that spans technology, skills, and creativity in challenges ranging from embedded systems design to algorithm development to digital arts. This year, the theme of the overall competition is “Education,” where students are challenged to apply their technology-related expertise, skills, and creativity to enable “a better education for all.”
On the embedded competition, over 450 teams worldwide answered the challenge. From the beginning of Competition on November 15, 2006, teams had just three months to get back with project proposals. With that amount of competition, judging was fierce, and the first big cut – from 450 teams back to 200 -- left some excellent proposals below the line. “It’s amazing year after year to take a look at the way students come together with this competition to build something cool and interesting,” says Mike Hall, Senior Technical Product Manager in the Mobile and Embedded Devices Group at Microsoft. “We get to see not only how students deal with finding solutions for real-world problems, but also with taking that project to productization. In the past, we’ve had student projects actually commercialized.”
[more]
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