BiSCA @ ITSAF 2006

Last Wednesday, ITSAF 2006 took place at Petra University, ITSAF is a graduation projects exhibition and competition, in case you are wondering, and Project BiSCA was there in action.

ITSAF was, considered by my self as well as others, a nice place of enthusiasm for us, fresh grads, and definitely a success. Except for 1 thing, Microsoft had its nose here as well. (well, Ok, I didnt really like the campus.... and who on earth said that the private university chicks are better than the governmental universities! HU ROXX MAN;)).

24 IT projects participated, those 24 projects were partitioned into 3 groups, with 8 projects each, out of which 2 are chosen for the finals.

The evaluators for each group consisted of 3 Drs (Dodgy Style University Dr if i'd describe them) as well as 1 out of “People from the IT market”. Ironically, out of the companies participating in ITSAF, the 3 guys “From the market” in the 3 groups happened to MICROSOFTISTS!

Either from Microsoft Jordan or “Microsoft Partner” training centers.

Anyway, this came out with only 1 non Microsoft project in the finals, that was definitely not us!

Actually, 3 projects were made with 0% of Microsoft stuff: Java SMS API by a couple of guys from PSUT (which passed to the finals and got the 6th position), a Digital watermarking kit made with Java by a guy (YES, He was the only 1 man show, he deserved the 7th place for that for sure ;) from Zarqa Private Uni, and project BiSCA which even had Linux as part of its deployment plan (the Street Situated displays in BiSCA are to be running a light weight Linux kernel, X Windowing system and our BiSCA-Display), and had TUX as well as Solaris (for the server) on its poster ;) BiSCA got the 8th place.

By the way, BiSCA was the only project with an Arabic User Interface!

The guy from compu-base (Microsoft Partner, and slave) in our evaluation group asked the guys that did the Java SMS API, explicitly: “What Microsoft Components did you use”!?!??!?!?!??!

the evaluation was “supposed to be” according to: The Applicability in the Industry, GUI usability, Suitability and Complexity of Tech used, creativity, and efficiency.

But taking a look at the final 6 projects, they included:
A restaurant touch screen ordering system, with a WEB Interface! (Damn it, it was full of tiny Hyperlinks and radio buttons!).

A CMS (Content Management System) or website if you would call it, where 5 guys were in the project, and only 2 programmed, 1 programmed it with ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL server, while the other with PHP and MySQL....! kinda too hybrid, don't you think!

A Car Navigation system, with a dumb GPS device and Labtop!
Yes, the labtop is running the navigation system, connected through bluetooth to the GPS device, and running Microsoft SQL Server Database!!!!!!!!!
They even suggested applying it to TAXIs and restaurant deliveries!!!!! WHAT!

Anyway, out of 2 HU projects in ITSAF (we could have participated with more, someone is to be blamed in HU), 1 of us got to the finals, the project is called JordanGuide, a website portal with all sorts services, the project was neat enough so that it can be deployed at the very moment on a server and run.
And yes, they rocked the 1st place baby :)

Congrats to Abu Satif, 3ala2, Shaza, and 3abood (who didnt make it)... they won 1000 JDs by the way, and 3ala2 had enough luck last wednesday to win the draw on a ticket to Larnaca ;)

It was definitely an HU day wednesday, it was a happy HU table during the dinner, and man we were all up and running, everyone was staring at us, they were like: “Man, those guys are, beside knowing what they're doing, they are crazy”.....

The HU 2002 is invading everyone, its just that we are still sleeping after those 4 year of Campus... but we are invading :)