TO mark the 10th anniversary of four computer organisations, a series of computer competitions will be held during the next month, said spokespersons from the organisations.
The four computer organisations are the Myanmar Computer Federation, Myanmar Computer Professionals Association, Myanmar Computer Industry Association and Myanmar Computer Enthusiasts Association.
Application development, ICT product and services and educational project competitions will be held and three prizes – K500,000 for the first prize, K300,000 for the second prize and K200,000 for the third prize – will be awarded for each competition.
The application development competition, which will be conducted by MCPA, will be held at the e-learning centre in Myanmar Info-Tech in Hlaing township on October 19 from 9am to 5pm.
“We’re holding this competition to let programmers know about workload and time-sharing habits while developing a real application,” said U Tun Khaing, the spokesperson of MCPA.
He said the contestants, who can participate as a group formed of two or more members, have to be the members of MCPA, but those who have won prizes in previous competitions are not allowed to compete.
The contestants have to develop a part of a business application, which is assigned by the judging panel, within a set period, but will be allowed to write in any programming language they choose, he said.
“We held previous competitions with two categories – Windows application and web application – but this time, we won’t set a category for the competition and will let users compete in the category they like,” he said.
Another computer competition in line is the ICT products and services competition, which is organised by the Myanmar Computer Industry Association.
The competition concerns the software products of domestic IT companies in 13 categories – including tools and infrastructure applications, e-Community and e-government, industrial applications and e-logistics.
“The competition is meant to raise public awareness of locally developed software applications and their usefulness,” said U Thein Htun Pe, the vice-chairman of MCIA.
He said contestant companies should submit software CDs and explanations of their software features to the Myanmar Computer Federation office in Myanmar Info-Tech not later than October 10 and the judging panel will review and decide the winners on Oct 11.
Uniqueness, value to the public, functionality and features, the quality and applicability of the technology and its presentation will be the criteria for choosing the winners, said U Thein Htun Pe.
“We’ve got plans to submit the winning software products to this year’s competition for the Asia-Pacific ICT Award,” he said, adding that the products will also be shown to the public at the IT technology show, which is planned to be held next month to mark the 10th anniversary of the computer organisations.
He said this was the first time that the ICT products and services competition had been held in this form – previous competitions had been presented as a national ICT award competition.
There will be an educational project competition during October, at which educational software applications projects developed by schools under the Basic Education Department (1), (2) and (3) and the Department of Education Planning and Training.
“Schools can enter this competition with their educational application projects, developed for the whole course or just a part of a course,” said U Thein Htun Pe of MCIA, adding that the contestants should submit software CDs and explanation for features of software before October 10.
The judging panel will review and select the winners on October 11and the winners may have a chance to receive technical support from computer organisations to develop their project for using as a learning assistance tool.
