Start of Year Fair at Manchester University September 2010

Greetings to all the students from Manchester University who attended the Start of Year Fair (20-22 September 2010, University Place Square, Oxford Road, Manchester)! The representative of the Academic Team at Microsoft (Rafal Kwiek) thanks to courtesy of Lee Stott (Head of Information Systems) and the entire HORNET Team (Halls of Residence Network) was able to attend the first two days of this fantastic event and talk about all things “Microsoft for Students”.

The Hornet Team providing advice at the Welcome Fair

Microsoft answering questions at the Welcome Fair

The event attracted 14,796 attendees over the 3 days period and was a great opportunity to engage with the local student community introducing the whole range of Microsoft programs and offers available to students as well as answering the general questions that they might have about them. We joined stand no. 8 and the “Sitting Duck Campaign” organised by the HORNET Team with some great prizes to be won (including an XBOX 360 console)!

First of all, all the students were pointed to the one stop place for staying in touch with us – the official “Microsoft UK Students” page on Facebook (https://facebook.com/microsoftukstudents) followed by our official blog at MSDN (https://blogs.msdn.com/microsoftukstudents). These were quite popular, but the true interest usually got released later on when they learned about the “Microsoft Student” website (https://microsoft.com/student) with all the best student discounts, programs, and products; “Microsoft DreamSpark” (https://dreamspark.com) providing students with Microsoft professional tools at no charge; or “MSDNAA” – Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance (https://msdnaa.net) through which they could obtain the latest Microsoft software including Windows 7 completely for free!

In addition to the above – students were also introduced to the world’s premier student technology competition called “Imagine Cup” (https://imaginecup.com) beginning with the mission statement: “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems”, through to the six competition categories including: “Software Design”, “Embedded Development”, “Game Design”, “Digital Media”, “IT Challenge” and ending on the entry details – this seemed to have gained a huge interest especially amongst the technical courses’ students.

Another Microsoft initiative designed for students of all backgrounds – MSP, Microsoft Student Partners (https://student-partners.com) proved to be extremely popular and many students have expressed their interest to participate by promising to send their contact details over to: ukmsp@microsoft.com and make the most of the benefits concerned!

Finally, every student was encouraged to have a go on the latest version of the web browser from Microsoft – Internet Explorer 9 Beta (https://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/products/ie-9/home). Some of them offered to provide invaluable feedback to help make it even better!

Overall the event was amazing, atmosphere just great and hospitality awesome – looking forward to more like this one in the future!