Smart calls for entries to SWEEP innovation awards

Smart Communications invites college students to join the country’s biggest technology competition, the SWEEP (Smart Wireless Engineering Education Program) Innovation and Excellence Awards.

Online registration won’t open until Nov. 6, but students of information technology (IT), electronics and communications engineering, computer engineering, computer science, and related courses are encouraged to start thinking of mobile and digital innovations that can improve people’s lives.

The winning team of the 14th SWEEP Awards, which has the theme “#LifeLikeNeverBefore: Digital Innovations for a Better Tomorrow” will get P300,000.

The second placer will get P200,000, while the third placer will receive P100,000.

Schools of the top three teams will each get a digital campus package from Smart and parent company PLDT.

Interested students, aged 17 to 25, should form a team, ideally comprising four members, and think of a wireless application under any of the following categories:

Consumer–innovations for personal use or for customers or buyers;

Business to Business–for government and business transactions;

Social Innovations–covering the fields of education, environment, disaster preparedness and response, health, livelihood, or agriculture;

Big Data–involving big data, social media, and web analytics;

Machine to Machine or Inter- net of Things–involving intelligently connected devices and systems.

The innovation should use PLDT or Smart’s network connectivity, products, and/or solutions.

The teams should prepare a video pitch not exceeding three minutes and upload it at www. smartsweep.ph starting Nov. 6. The full mechanics can also be found on this site.

The deadline for submission is on Dec. 15. Shortlisted teams will be notified via email on Jan. 8, 2018. They can then start work- ing on their prototypes.

The SWEEP Awards was launched in 2004 to provide college students with the platform to develop innovative applications that solve consumer pain points.

It is a component of SWEEP, an internationally-recognized program under which Smart partners with the academe to raise the standards of engineering and IT education in the country.

For more information on SWEEP, visit https://www.facebook.com/sweepschools.