Bandar Seri Begawan - Ten creators of innovative products were rewarded for having brought forth this year's best creative ideas in a number of categories in the seventh annual Brunei ICT Awards (BICTA) yesterday.
The BICTA 2011 awards were presented by the Minister of Communications, Pehin Orang Kaya Hamzah Pahlawan Dato Seri Setia Awg Hj Abdullah bin Begawan Mudim Dato Paduka Hj Bakar, as guest of honour at the ceremony held at The Empire Hotel and Country Club in Jerudong.
No first place winners were selected in the ICT Industry Category. Merit Awards went to Iplus Soft Technology with their entry "Brunei Lifestyle Mobile Application"; Social Buzz Advertising with "Social Deal Brunei"; and Crescent Sdn Bhd with their entry, "Islamic Brunei Educators". Each Merit Award-winning team received a B$5,000 cash prize. Indah Sejahtera Development Services Sdn Bhd took third place, earning themselves a cash prize of $2,500.
In the Tertiary Education Category, the Sultan Saiful Rijal Technical College (MTS SR) won first place' with their entry "Brunei Experience Multimedia Project"; they received a cash prize of $7,000.
The entry "Simple Pay" won Institut Teknologi Brunei (ITB) the merit award in the same category and a $3,500 cash prize.
No first place winners were selected in the Secondary Education Category. Chung Hwa Middle School, BSB's entry "Waseven Resource Reservation" earned them a merit, award, which came with a cash prize of $2,000. Masin Secondary School took the third place in that category, and a $1,000 cash prize, for their entry "Easy Text Book".
Apart from the cash prizes, all the winners also received trophies and certificates of participation. All the awarded participants will represent Brunei in the competition for the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards (APICTA) 2011 in Pattaya, Thailand from November 8-11.
Special awards were also presented to two participants for their contributions to an Islamic concept or the Green Initiative. Crescent Sdn Bhd was given the Islamic Special Award while Megamas Training Company Sdn Bhd, who came up with the "Brunei Carbon Footprint Calculator", received the Green ICT Award.
Earlier, Dato Paduka Hj Awg Alaihuddin bin Pehin Orang Kaya Digadong Seri Lela Dato Seri Utama Hj Awg Mohammad Taha, the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Communications and Chairman of the BICTA Steering Committee in his opening remarks said the key aspect to consider in fully developing ICT in the country is the continuous process of supporting innovation.
"It begins with incubating new ideas, coaching and developing these ideas and it continues until they are fully realised," he said. "This can be further facilitated earlier on through the school curriculum and activities and by maximising its true potential through the use of incubation centres. The availability of funding for ICT products or applications created by research centres can further help to raise the number and quality of intellectual property of Brunei-made ICT products in future."
Dato Paduka Hj Awg Alaihuddin further said that it has always been an ongoing effort by the Ministry of Communications in collaboration with the Authority for Info-communications Technology Industry of Brunei Darussalam (AITI) and the Info-Comm Federation of Brunei (IFB), as well as other stakeholders, to support and develop Brunei's ICT industries though various ICT programmes.
The Chief Judge of the BICTA Competition, Dr Yong Chee Tuan, a Senior Lecturer at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) also outlined the findings of all the judges for this year's participant presentations. He said BICTA 2011 received a record 29 entries. "The overall increase in quality and number of participants may have been the result of the attractive winning prizes coupled with intensified publicity, roadshows, and the new Idea, Design and Development (IDD) Workshops," he said.
"The judges were delighted to mention that all entries carried a very trendy product name. Most of the product ideas are very novel, and the write-ups are of very high quality, which naturally is a 'good start' in terms of packaging."
Moving on to the Secondary Education Category Submissions, Dr Yong said the judges noted that many of the ideas were creative and yet carried practical concepts, which they believe would be easily up for any company to develop and commercialise.
Referring to the Tertiary Education Category; Dr Yong said the judges were happy to see that the products were centred on multimedia and mobile applications, which are the 'in-things' in the ICT field.
"Their presentations were well-crafted and there was a good balance between technical and commercial knowledge. If there was something missing, it would be the absence of some entrepreneurs or large companies to further enhance these products and bring them to the market."
As for the ICT Industry Category, many of the participants demonstrated a very high level of creativity in addressing the application s of ICT to make a significant impact, said the competition chief judge.
The primary objective of BICTA is to stimulate innovation and creativity in the ICT industry amongst individuals and associations including SMEs; to become a benchmark for local companies as they compete amongst each other and to be nominated in the annual APICTA, to which Brunei will be playing host in 2012.
--Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin
8:39 PM
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