| Nuri Sufri |
THE winners of the Brunei ICT Awards (BICTA) 2015 yesterday received their prizes at a ceremony hosted by the Ministry of Communications at the Amar Pahlawan Hall of the Ministry of Communications.
The annual ICT competition was jointly organised by the Authority for Info-communications Technology Industry of Brunei Darussalam (AITI) and InfoCom Federation Brunei (IFB).
Minister of Communications Pehin Orang Kaya Hamzah Pahlawan Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Abdullah bin Begawan Mudim Dato Paduka Haji Bakar was the guest of honour at the event, while the other guests included Abdul Mutalib bin Pehin Orang Kaya Seri Setia Dato Paduka Haji Mohammad Yusof, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Communications and Chairman of BICTA Steering Committee.
Themed ‘Innovation to Generate a Smart Nation,’ BICTA 2015 opened for registration in March 2015 for participation by primary, secondary and tertiary schools, as well as local individuals and ICT companies in three main categories, namely, School Project, Tertiary Project and ICT Industry.
In a welcoming speech, Abdul Mutalib mentioned that BICTA celebrates its 12th anniversary this year and “the number of participants has increased by at least 50 per cent from last year. This year we have received a total number of 45 entries compared to 30 entries in 2014.”
Students from St John’s School emerged as winners of the BICTA 2015 School Project category, winning a cash prize of BND3,000 for developing a product called ‘Secondary Studies Redspot,’ which contains study notes and videos aimed at students in secondary school.
Guest of honour with BiCTA 2015 School Project winner, St John’s School (pic above) and BiCTA 2015 Tertiary Category winner, Institut Technologi Brunei (below)
BiCTA 2015 ICT Industry Category winner, D5 Innovation, with the guest of honour
Guest of honour with the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Communications-cum-Chairman of BiCTA 2015 Steering Committee Abdul Mutalib bin Pehin Orang Kaya Seri Setia Dato Paduka Haji Mo-hammad Yusof, left, and Special Award winner, Joel Canoza Espiritu
Presenting the Special Award ‘Green ICT’ to a recipient from Universiti Brunei Darussalam for the ‘Intelli-gent Energy Monitoring and Management System’ project
Special Award winner, HalBase Company, with the guest of honour
Minister of Communications-cum-guest of honour Pehin Orang Kaya Hamzah Pahlawan Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Abdullah bin Begawan Mudim Dato Paduka Haji Bakar and senior officers in a group photo with the award recipients
Speaking to the Bulletin, project leader Mohammad Rizwan Hamjid expressed his team’s joy at winning first place.
“We came up with this idea because more than 70 per cent of students in Brunei and all over the world have been getting grades D and below, so we decided to create an app that will help students get better grades.”
The winner of the BND7,000 cash prize for the Tertiary Project category was Institut Teknologi Brunei with their product ‘ITB Virtual Campus using OpenSim,’ which was developed by Nurul Hidayati binti Haji Mohammad Sunni for her final year project, that seeks to educate its users using the SIMS game app concept.
She said “I plan to use this app to educate people and currently the app is based on the ITB building. Later on I am thinking of implementing museums and communications such as Facebook.”
D5 Innovation with its product ‘Virtualkiub’ won first place for the ICT Industry category and took home the BND10,000 cash prize. ‘Virtualkiub’ was developed by Packir Maideen to provide a wider business platform for online sellers and home-based entrepreneurs.
Winners and runner-ups of each category will also be selected to represent Brunei in the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance (APICTA) Awards 2015 which will be held in Sri Lanka from November 18 to 22 this year.
Special Awards were given to three recipients, namely Joel Canoza Espiritu with PI-BOARD for ‘Promising Entrepreneur’, which is an award that recognises startups with most distinctive product and market potential, as well as Universiti Brunei Darussalam for its product Intelligent Energy Monitoring and Management System for ‘Green ICT’ that emphasises sustainable, conservation, recyclable or environment related products, and Halbase Company with Mynaemoglobin for ‘Emerging Technology’ that utilises emerging technologies such as the internet of Things, Big Data, Wearables and Disruptive Technologies.
There was no recipient for the ‘Young Developer,’ which is another special award opened to primary and secondary students with the most innovative ICT project.
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