February 2012


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“We worked tirelessly, strived for excellence and we achieved it! This unparalleled experience would have not been possible without such diligent team members, to whom I am eternally grateful and I must also show my appreciation to all who supported us in this exciting endeavour.” -Sabeeha Mohammed

By Dr Kim Mallalieu

UWI St. Augustine’s Campus IT Services team won the regional Code Sprint Competition with their application “Fishing Gear Analyzer.”

The Code Sprint, held as part of a multi-country event involving an Open Data Conference, was conducted by teams led by Matthew McNaughton of UWI’s Mona School of Business in Jamaica; Yacine Khelladi of Fundacion Taigüey in the Dominican Republic, and Dr Kim Mallalieu leading UWI’s CIRP (TT) in Trinidad and Tobago; Code Sprint participants from Cuba were accommodated on site in Jamaica. The local events were held from January 26-27, 2012.

Trinidad and Tobago focused on ICT access, small scale fisheries and agriculture. The Jamaican event focused on the areas of agriculture, trade and economic indicators, and tourism. The Dominican Republic event did not specify thematic focal points within a broad developmental scope.

The Trinidad and Tobago event was hosted by the Faculty of Engineering on the St. Augustine Campus of The UWI. It began with an all-day conference pitched at data gatherers, producers, processors and publishers; policy makers; regulators; executing agencies; academics; development-focused communities of practice and service providers. It was attended by over 100 participants from public, private, academic and civil sectors, across a rich variety of disciplines and thematic focii.

Code Sprint presentations were the focus of the second day’s proceedings. This session was pitched at a young audience and was very well attended with well over 100 participants, predominantly from local high schools and The UWI. Code sprinters were given 24 hours to code following their attendance at the opening session which established the background and motivation for the code sprint and summarized the terms of reference, key tools and datasets to be used.

Code sprint applications were assessed by an expert panel of judges on the basis of launch-ability (0-10), open data usage (0-15), originality and problem solving (0-20), features and usefulness (0-15), user experience/ user interface (0-10), long term potential (0-20) and presentations (0-10). Judges deliberated during the closing keynote address. To close the session on Day 2, the top three teams of the 15 registered in Trinidad and Tobago were awarded first, second and third place trophies and prize monies of US$2000, US$1,000 and US$500 respectively. UWI St. Augustine’s Campus IT Services came up the winners with “Fishing Gear Analyzer.” Digital Business took second place with “Fisherman’s Friend,” an at-sea emergency directory. Another UWI team, this one only students, came third with “Crop Out” an agriculture analytics application. Teams expressed a general interest in further developing their applications and, in the case of Digital Business, taking the application “up the islands.”

The prizes for the regional competition are as follows:

First Place:

  1. All expenses paid trip to the Sunlight Foundation’s Transparency Camp Washington DC ( http://transparencycamp.org/)
  2. An invitation for the Caribbean team to present at a tech talk series facilitated by Global Broadband Initiative ( http://gbiportal.net/) in Washington DC the Thursday before the Transparency Camp
  3. Blackberry devices

Second and Third Place Prizes:

  1. Support from the Caribbean Open Institute
  2. Blackberry devices

The Winners:

  1. Fish Gear Analyser from Team CITS, representing Trinidad and Tobago
  2. Crecerd from Team Beceritos, representing the Dominican Republic
  3. Monitor ODM from Team Uapianos, representing the Dominican Republic

The slide presentations and speeches from the Open Data Conference can be viewed at http://developingcaribbean.org/trinidad-tobago-2012/trinidad-tobago-agenda/ and recorded videos at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/developing-the-caribbean-trinidad-and-tobago-conference-feed-1--lt1/videos and video interviews at http://developingcaribbean.org/trinidad-tobago-2012/videos/