Smart invites students to join 13th SWEEP awards

PLDT mobile subsidiary Smart Communications is calling on technology and engineering students to come up with mobile and digital innovations and join the country’s biggest technology competition, the SWEEP (Smart Wireless Engineering Education Program) Innovation and Excellence Awards.

The winning team of the 13th SWEEP Awards – which has the theme “Changing Lives Through Mobile and Digital Innovations” – will get P300,000, while their school will get a P150,000 grant. The second placer will get P200,000, while the third placer will receive P100,000. Their respective schools will get a grant equivalent to half of their prizes.

Interested students aged 17 to 25 should form a team and come up with a wireless application under any of the following categories:

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

• Business to Business (B2B) – for government and business transactions

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

• Big Data – involving social media and web analytics

• Machine to Machine (M2M) or Internet of Things (IoT) – involving intelligently connected devices and systems

Teams should come up with a video pitch and register online at www.smartsweep.ph starting Aug. 1. The full mechanics can also be found on this site. The deadline for submission of entries is Sept. 30.

The SWEEP Awards was launched in 2004 to provide college students with the platform to develop and create innovative applications that provide solutions to existing consumer pain points. It is an initiative under SWEEP, longest-running collaboration between the industry and academe aimed at raising the standards of engineering and information technology (IT) education in the country.