Unfortunately we didn't win the grants of $ 75,000. But we won't let ourselves be discouraged by this. The last weeks have been very successful for us and we will continue to develop rapidly. Almost daily, we find new ideas and need some time to implement them. But the feedback and general enthusiasm motivate us further to believe in majiSolutions.

As part of Microsofts Innovation Day in Munich, where innovative ideas are presented to the press, we were allowed to present our project to about 40 representatives of the press. Afterwards there was the possibility for many personal conversations, and in addition some good interviews with n-tv, MDR and Microsoft about majiSolutions and innovation have taken place. You can watch a partial English-language video of the event under Media.

But it was also interesting to get an idea of all the new technologies, which were als presented. We met team "Zebresel", who are doing a great job as well. So all in all it was a great event for becoming more popular and meeting people.

We wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
If we look back, so this year was very exciting for us as team "majiSolutions". We invested a lot of work and time to bring majiSolutions to the level where it is today. We want to thank all the companions and look forward to the coming year 2012, when it goes on with new and united efforts on the realization of our projects.
In this mind, we say THANK YOU!
Your team majiSolutions
(Veronika, Rene, Matthias und Hannes)

Yesterday's video conference with Seattle went really well. We are now in the final stages of the application. The video shoot took more than 7 hours. Tonight is deadline. The video gets the final touch, the texts will be revised again and our best friend: coffee ;-)
Anyone who wonders what's going on: We are the last 15 international teams in the competition "Imagine Cup Grants". It is about a financial support of $ 100,000 and long-range mentroing for really feasible projects.
Now it's fingers crossed!

Hannes is back from Tanzania now. The beginning of our two pilot projects are made​​. From early 2012, the software is first tested in real action. We are realy excited about the results!

After some interesting days with many exciting events, we landed back in Germany Sunday afternoon. Meanwhile very unusual, that here all speak German. On the other hand, we have discovered the Statue of Liberty right next to the Berlin central station. Something funny...

Although Thursday was the official departure day, we still stayed two more days, because youare not every day in New York, of course! So we visited the musical Billy Elliot, made a trip to Brooklyn (photo: view of Manhattan from the Brooklyn Bridge), went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) and American Museum of Natural History and dived a little bit into the American lifestyle, with the visit of a jazz bar and a good breakfast in a diner.

The award ceremony of the Imagine Cup 2011 took place today at the Koch Theater of the Lincoln Center in New York City. Before that, there was once more a showcase for media representatives, NGOs and other interested persons. So we could explain our project and ideas again a lot of people. Then all category winners were presented after a few speeches, e.g. by New York Mayor Bloomberg, high Microsoft employees and actress Eva Longoria, who mentioned our project especially in her speech. Once this was done by Steve Ballmer in his opening speech already, surely a good sign for our project and work. The winners of our category, Software Design, are: 1. Team Hermes (Ireland) 2. Team Note Taker (United States) 3. Oasys Team (Jordan) Of course we congratulate all for the good work!

For individual trips in New York mid morning, we attended on a bus tour through the south of Manhattan together. Then we took the ferry for a brief private(!) visit of the Statue of Liberty and finally there was a big picnic on Ellis Island in front of the skyline of New York. Just a fantastic view!

With almost an hour delay the announcement of the semi-final participants taked place. Unfortunately our team, and also the embedded team from Germany, was missing in the called competitors. We are still proud of the achievement and try to pick up as much as possible from the competition and New York City!

The first round is right done now. It was a very good presentation and also discussion. We are now waiting for the results in the evening and realy going out first time to explore New York City!

Today we had a really exciting day. We prepared a showcase in the morning to have an interview with Steve Ballmer. So TV teams from BBC and Reuters were arround and we had really nice interviews. It was also very interesting to see the other projects and to get in contact with all the competitors here. It is a great competition and opportunity for us. At the evening time we had an opening ceremony also with Steve Ballmer. All in all the day was a fantastic experience. Tomorrow we will have our first presentation in round 1. We look forward presenting majiSolutions and telling you more about the Imagine Cup.