The 2019 edition of the National Telecommunications Regulatory Commission’s (NTRC) ‘icode784’ Competition came to a close on Tuesday, with the final round of judging in all three categories.
Sabriya Neverson, Jamarl Pope and Moriah Williams of NUSS Conquerors 2, representing the North Union Secondary School, got the judges’ nod of approval for having the best idea in the Secondary Schools Idea Category, for their ‘Smart Desk Idea’ for students. The NUSS upped their position from third in 2018.
Astra of the St Vincent Grammar School and the UISS Health Science from the Union Island Secondary School placed second and third respectively.
Stanislaus Gomes, Isaac Cepeda and Luke Wilson of Astra added to their second place finish in the Idea Category, when they won the Secondary Mobile App category, with an app geared towards assisting visitors with respect to places of interest, maps and even menus for local restaurants, from their mobile phone.
The St Joseph’s Convent Kingstown’s TMABF (To Make a Better Future) finished second, and S4 Coders of the Mountain View Academy finished third.
In the Open Category, Rolano Nanton and Khalisa Peters, together known as ‘KNR’, won the Open Category with an app that linked clients seeking specialized or custom made programmes and apps directly to programmers.
Teams ‘WE ARE HEER’ and ‘First Contact’ finished second and third respectively.
Nanton and Peters, both second year students at the Division of Art and Sciences of the St Vincent and the Grenadines Community College, explained that they took all of three weeks to get the app put together. “There were a lot of sleepless nights,” Peters said.
Neither is presently pursuing careers in IT though they both seem to have an interest in technology.
It is the first time that they have collaborated, and now that they were successful, they say that there may be some other collaborative efforts.
The Girls’ High School was recognized for having the most entries in the Competition.
The preliminaries of the Competition were held from Oct. 15 – 18. Director of the NTRC noted that the competition was re-branded this year, from the I2 competition to the ‘icode784’ competition, in keeping with the competition’s new focus on the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations. (The Vincentian)