SAY the name Jamaica and immediately images of fast athletes, pulsating reggae music and sparkling white sand beaches come to mind. But software design? Computer wiz kids? Not usually.

However, thanks to the outstanding feat of the information science department at Northern Caribbean University (NCU), the island has claimed its place as one of the best in the world in computer software design.

The NCU team has come out on top in the prestigious Microsoft Imagine Cup competition, hosted by Microsoft International each year to seek out the best student computer software designers in the world. The four-member NCU team toppled 90 others, including 15 teams from China, to win the coveted Microsoft Inter-operability Award.

The team — Shawn McLean, Derron Brown, Marcel Mairs and Dwayne Samuels — is back in Jamaica from Poland, where this year’s competition was held. They will never forget the moment they were crowned winners.

Manager and head of the university’s information science department Kenrie Hylton, who has managed all of the institution’s Imagine Cup teams, summed it up.

“Boy, it’s a feeling you have and you’re in a forum where you want to jump and shout and scream and you just feel restrained. It was overwhelming and a wonderful feeling,” he said.

Mairs said he started feeling the rush even before they were announced winners.

“It’s set up in such a way that we realised we’d won before they called our name,” he said.

The winning NCU team was flanked by runners-up Brazil and third place winners Indonesia.

This is not the first time that an NCU team has shone in the competition. In 2007, the institution copped third prize in the software design category — the first time ever that a team from Jamaica, the Caribbean or Latin America had achieved such a feat.

This year, again another first, NCU sent two teams to the international competition — Team Xormis, the winning team, and Team Educ8. It was also the first time that a female student made one of the teams.

When Career & Education sat down to chat with both teams, Xormis team member Dwayne Samuels said their award-winning programme, also dubbed Xormis, is a multi-purpose software that shows how other programmes can be used to enhance the Microsoft product line.

“Some people at Microsoft recognise that not all Microsoft technology is as efficient as third-party technologies. If they could actually have a system that uses Microsoft technology to make it more efficient, data transfer faster, etc, it would be really great and that’s how they came up with the whole inter-operability idea…” he said.

Samuels added that Xormis is designed to tackle a number of different problems.

“For example, disaster relief, and helping businesses to find reliable, efficient and affordable solutions. The public can use it to search out certain problems they have in their communities,” he noted.

But Hylton said that while Xormis is not a job search software programme, it can help entrepreneur-minded persons measure their job prospects.

“You wanna start a business, but you’re not sure if it’s going to be viable, you’re not sure if what you’re going to be producing is required in your community, a user can go on and say these are the resources available in my community and based on that, these are some of the things you would use these resources to produce and there’s a demand for these things,” he said.

Now that the team is back home, they plan to launch the world-famous software.

“We’ve made contact with UNESCO representatives; they’re talking with Xormis to develop other projects and other initiatives. We’ve also spoken to representatives from the Adventist Development Relief Agency (ADRA) to use them as a test,” Hylton revealed.

Once the software is tried, tested and proven, it will be made available to the rest of the world.

Team members said that although success was sweet, it took lots of hard work and sacrifice to get to Poland. But for Team Educ8 member Warren Robinson, it was “a worthy sacrifice” — even though his team didn’t come back home with an award.

“Just to reach the world finals is an achievement in itself,” he said.

Though Team Educ8 didn’t take one of the categories, they received rave reviews from the Imagine Cup judges.

“They really liked the solution; they said it was really well thought out; they liked the context. We were basically re-designing the e-learning process in primary education, which I don’t think exists anywhere else (in Jamaica),” said Trevoir Williams, whose mother, a primary school teacher, inspired the Team Educ8 software.

“We’ve shown it to representatives from the Ministry (of Education) and they are enticed by it and we’ve shown it to people who’re already in the e-learning game and they said it has a lot of potential,” Williams said.

They, too, are planning to market their software and release it locally.

Since NCU first entered a team in the local leg of the competition in 2005, they have been crowned local champions every year and regional and Latin American champions most years.

“God has been behind it. He’s blessed us with the ideas. It’s smart work. From 2005, we garnered what we needed to do to win and from then on, our eyes have always been on the prize. One of the things that has led to our success is the passion our students exhibit. They’re driven, they’re self-motivated, they’re truly passionate about the Imagine Cup and competing on the world stage,” said Hylton.

But given the name NCU has made for itself as Imagine Cup champions, how has the school and the department in particular benefitted? Vice-president for academic administration Dr Beverley Cameron said it has benefitted tremendously, “as prospective students come to us knowing that we are more than capable of competing internationally”.

Hylton agreed. He said besides increased enrolment, and the added publicity, “it’s what it does for the students here; they want to get involved. In 2005 when we started, most persons did not believe we could compete in the nationals, much less regionals, much less make it to the world finals”.

Also, because of their exposure and successes in the Imagine Cup, members from previous teams have gone on to secure jobs overseas or been accepted in Ivy League universities in the United States.

But despite their success and the glory it has brought to Jamaica, the teams are disappointed that more Jamaicans do not appreciate how big a win at the Imagine Cup is.

“Making it to the world finals is a phenomenal achievement. It is as if you made it to the World Cup. Each step — the nationals, regionals, finals — should be applauded. Jamaica in general should pay more attention and take this more seriously. I’m looking at Brazil, who came second; when you look at the press they got when they got back home¸ you’d think they won the entire thing,” noted Hylton.

“Other teams were on CNN; they got a lot of press. And we beat them, we won. They were second to us. We’re hoping we’ll get to the point where we’ll have some Jamaican press who’ll travel with us,” he added.

Cameron agreed that the teams’ achievement is understated. She said few people realise how much competition the teams came up against. “Many people do not realise that the Imagine Cup is not just for undergrad students, but for all categories — master’s and doctoral students as well,” she said. “Our team members are undergraduate students, so for them to go up against master’s students and maybe even doctoral students and come out on top, is a phenomenal achievement”.

But how can Jamaica be made to see the big deal? Mentor of Team Educ8 Henry Osbourne thinks corporate Jamaica and the Government need to get more involved.

“A lot of persons think, ‘Oh, Imagine Cup, it’s an NCU thing’, but it’s not. Imagine Cup is a student competition, it’s open to all students, age 16 up, so if we can get even Microsoft Jamaica to push it more, get it into other universities, community colleges, mak more students knowledgeabl about the competition, then increased recognition will follow,” he said.

But whether or not increased local competition comes quickly, NCU intends to continue taking part in the prestigious international student competition. Hylton said future NCU teams will be entering the embedded development and gaming design categories of the competition.

But the finer details of those categories will be left up to next year’s Imagine Cup teams. For now, both members of Xormis and Team Educ8 are focusing on their individual futures. At least four of the eight members of both teams will be graduating this month and either going on to higher education or looking for jobs in the IT market. The others are focusing on finishing up their degrees. Being in the competition didn’t cause them to lose out though, as they received course credits for making the Imagine Cup teams.

In the meantime, both teams are looking at ways to fine-tune their Imagine Cup entries, and seeking to use their unforgettable experience to enhance their country, their institution and their lives. Most of them have their eyes set on working for international computer software mega giants Google, Apple or Microsoft.