We are sponsoring novaIdea cup 06. What is novaIdea? novaIdea is a competition organized by students of Faculdade Ciências e Tecnologia , that belongs to the New University of Lisbon.
This competition is an idea competition, it doesn't need to be implemente, the participants only have to submit and idea (including conception and the planning ofr it's implementation) whose theme this year is Education. More specifically, how technology can enable a better education. The only restriction is that has to be (at least in paper :-)) with Microsoft Technologies.
With this theme and the MS constraint, it doesn't take that much to figure that the competition will serve as pre competition for Microsoft's Imagine Cup.
Why are we sponsoring the event? apart from the fact that we can, that we want to and that we have been asked to (and we must oblige since we are obviously nice people :-)). We think, that in an ever increasing globalized and interconnected world, not only [quality] education (and our country surely is lagging on this field) will be a very important differentiator but also because we feel for those countries that want to thrive ideas and innovation are the only way to contribute to the bottom of a country.
competition blog (Portuguese)