Curtin University Sarawak

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Dr. Wong, BICTA Chief Judge, said that there were no “wow” factors in the submission and he said over the years, these expectations have become rather too subjective. Though many have used the means of social media, mobile applications and cloud technologies in their projects, these ideas will just remain as concepts without moving to the next phase of development and implementation.

This morning the BICTA Awards ceremony took place and there were no “winners” in the ICT industry and Secondary categories. Instead they received a “Merit Award”. Only Sultan Saiful Rijal Technical College won the Grand prize in the “Tertiary” category. This is because the products are making use of multi-media and moving away from developing “information systems”. Furthermore, their presentation was well-crafted and they had a good balance between technical and commercial knowledge.

There were 24 entries for the BICTA competition and the prizes were given by the Minister of Communications, YB Pehin OKHP Dato Seri Setia Hj Abdullah. There are three categories in the BICTA competition – ICT industry, Tertiary Category and Second Category.

ICT Industry category
No First Prize winners for ICT Industry Category
Iplussoft Technology “Brunei Lifestyle Mobile Application” – Merit Award – $5,000
SocialBuzz Advertising “Social Deal Brunei” – Merit Award – $5,000
Crescent Sdn Bhd “Islamic Brunei Educators”- Merit Award – $5,000
Indera Sejahtera Development Services Sdn Bhd “Where2kerja.com”- 3rd Place -$2,500

Tertiary category
Sultan Saiful Rijal Technical College “Brunei Experience Multimedia Project” – Winner Award – $7,000
Institute Technology Brunei “Simple pay” – Merit award – $3,500

Secondary category

No First Prize winner for Secondary Category
Chung Hwa Middle School, BSB “Waseven Resource Reservation” – Merit Awards – $2,000
Sekolah Menengah Masin “Easy Text Book” – 3rd Place – $1,000

All of the awarded participants will represent Brunei to compete for the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards (APICTA) 2011. This years’ APICTA will be held on November 8 – 11, 2011 in Dusit Thani Pattaya, Pattaya, Thailand.

Special Awards was presented to 2 participants for the contribution of their product to the concept of Islamic principle and moving towards the direction of Green intiative respectively to Crescent Sdn Bhd “Islamic Brunei Educators” and Megamas Training Company Sdn Bhd “Brunei Carbon Footprint Calculator.

Minister of Communications with invited guests, judges of BICTA and BICTA awardees

Minister of Communications with invited guests and judges of BICTA

Megamas Training Company won the Green Award for their “Brunei Carbon Footprint Calculator”

Hiro of SocialDeal – “This is the first time I participated in the competition and I didn’t expect this far. I might be joinging the Ignite Think Big competition too. For now, we can use this prize money for capital injection and look deeper to what SocialDeal can do. We have a 1,100 subscribers in a space of 3 months and it’s growing. We have a new deal coming up with Acer hard drive at a very good price which will be revealed soon”

Brunei Experience Multimedia Project was a project by Saiful Rijal Technical College and they are the only team that won in their respective cateogy. Their idea is a kiosk featuring attractions of Brunei and in a way, promote places of interests in Brunei for the incoming tourists. In a nutshell, this is a flash tourism kiosk. Oh yeah, they also won the Vocational Technical Institute in May 2011. They will be heading to Thailand this November

They previously enter the Think Big Business Plan 09/10 and they won. In BICTA, the brothers were only awarded the Merit Award as there were no winners in their category. With their mobile apps idea, you can share busines contacts and promote their businesses through mobile

Great victory for Crescent as they bagged two awards – a Merit ICT Award and Special Awards for the concept of Islamic principle

Now, now, now… What can I do with the prize money? :))

My outing on Sunday

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