The Design IT Competition  – The Winner The DesignIT competition has now ended, and I would to thank all those who reviewed the shortlist of entries and voted for the most innovative and creative submissions.  Nearly 1,000 IT professionals took the time to visit the DesignIT website to vote, and I am pleased to announce that the winner is James Elliot and his design of the Virtual Rucksack. The charity St Basils, who work to prevent youth homelessness, have won the £15,000 to see this idea implemented.

James Elliot has been a keen supporter of St Basils work and was aware that one of the biggest difficulties faced by young homeless people is keeping their whole life in a rucksack. The virtual rucksack created by James and St Basils provides a centralised, web based resources to help young homeless people get back on their feet. This system will act as a central store for their key personal records and documents and also provide a link to other agencies and advice.

IT professionals are asked to solve problems on a daily basis, and Microsoft wanted to recognise this through the DesignIT competition, James’ design is a great example of ingenuity which is consistently demonstrated by IT professionals across the UK.  To celebrate the creativity involved in all the entries this year, a group of artists from the London Art classes created and exhibited artwork inspired by these system designs, the exhibition was also the chance to  congratulate the winners.

Bruce Lynn from Microsoft and Bryan Glick editor of Computing celebrate with St Basil’s	Artwork by Ross Garth inspired by James Elliot system design for the Virtual Rucksack

If you would like to view the winning entry and all the runners up and previous entries please visit the DesignIT gallery.

On a final note I would like to thank everyone for their participation and congratulations once more to the winner.

If you would like anymore information about the competition or the gallery event please email DesignIT@microsoft.com.

Kind regards,

Bruce Lynn
Head of Server Business Group, Microsoft Ltd