29 APR

Jamaican Government Launches BlackBerry Developers Competition

In an effort to stimulate enterprise, encourage the use of technology to uplift the country’s youth, as well as to spark greater  interest in application development for mobile devices, Jamaica’s Ministry of Education, the Department of Information and Technology of the Prime Minister, and the Central Information Technology Office, have teamed up with mobile telecoms giant, Digicel, and Research In Motion, makers of  BlackBerry Smartphones, to produce Jamaica’s BlackBerry Developers Competition 2011.

For this competition, teams of students enrolled in Jamaican-registered primary, secondary and tertiary level educational institutions are being invited to submit ideas, or develop applications  for the BlackBerry Smartphone or Playbook.  Each submission will be judged based on areas such as usability, functionality, accessibility, design elements (for applications), usefulness, educational value, completeness of journal entries during development, among other criteria.

The main prize to be won is an all-expense paid trip to DevCon 2011, the BlackBerry Developers Competition to be held in San Francisco, California later on this year, along with the “Best in Show” Trophy.  Other prizes to be won include plaques, medals,  BlackBerry Smartphones with data and voice service from Digicel, as well as internships with the said company.

The competition is slated to begin on May 4, 2011, and consists of several specific  milestone dates in between, leading up to it’s ending on July 31, 2011.  Judging commences on August 8, 2011 and winners will be announced on August 19, 2011. Some time after this, an official Award Ceremony will be held. The date for this ceremony however, is yet to be announced.

For more information on Jamaica’s BlackBerry Developers Competition, you may visit the competition’s official website at www.bbdevelopers.gov.jm.

Will you be entering this year’s competition? Do you currently develop applications for BlackBerry mobile devices? Share your thoughts with us.

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Post Author: Roger

Roger Davis is a Visual & Interaction Designer from the Isle of Springs, otherwise known as Jamaica. He's passionate about Human-centered Design and is known to have a healthy obsession with all things interactive such as robots, websites and portable electronic devices. You can follow him on twitter or check out his Blog where he writes about Design along with other crazy things.

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4 thoughts on “Jamaican Government Launches BlackBerry Developers Competition”

    Corve

    (April 29, 2011 - 9:12 am)

    Cool idea.

    Purebloodkjb

    (April 29, 2011 - 5:14 pm)

    A fantastic idea. I have never developed a BB app but will certainly try and push my tertiary institution to put a team together. Doubt we will beat the powerhouse NCU though….

    Brus Martin

    (May 9, 2011 - 3:43 am)

    Good Idea.!! Thanx for great Information.

    Berry 6

    (June 28, 2011 - 11:00 am)

    Excellent Idea! http://BerryPINS.com fully supports this.

Comments are closed.