Nurturing Developers’ skills

Reliance Communications’s Mobile Developer Awards presentation function at New Delhi was an exciting event that felicitated and honoured young talent.

It was a glittering awards presentation function at New Delhi’s Hotel Le Meridien on May 10, 2006, where Chief Guest, Dr Sam Pitroda, Chairperson, National Knowledge Commission felicitated winners of Reliance Communications’s Second Mobile Developer Awards 2005-06. The event was organised by Reliance Developer Programme (RDP) to acknowledge and encourage young talent in mobile application development in India.

The Contest

The awards were given to winners of RDP’s Second Mobile Application Contest 2006, which was held between November 1, 2005 and February 28, 2006. The contest received tremendous response from the developer community. Fifty-two applications, each unique in its own way, covering a variety of topics such as devotion, music, fun, entertainment, and games were submitted at the contest. Particularly impressive was not just the number of applications, which was higher than last time, but that over 60 percent of the submissions came from the student community through our company’s University Relationship Programme (URP).

Judging process

Applications were judged on the basis of essential parameters like User Interface, Uniqueness/innovation, Functionality, and Business Potential, with different weightage assigned to each parameter. Out of the fifty two applications, eight were chosen as winners by the distinguished jury comprising Vijay Mukhi, IT Educationist and Cyber Security Expert, Datta Subrahmanya, Vice President (Customer Advocacy), Cisco, and Prashant Dogra, Technology Marketing Specialist, Nokia. Three of the winners were from the general category and five from the student category. The most noteworthy feature of this year’s awards policy was that the winners and participants got an opportunity to monetise their applications though a revenue sharing arrangement with Reliance Communications. Dr Pitroda complimented the efforts of Reliance Communications in providing an ideal platform for developers to showcase their skill and talent and presented the awards to the winners. (See box: Pitroda speak)

Winning applications

The prize winning applications were Hanuman Chalisa, Prashnavali, Mobile Blogger, Language Tutorial, Animated Greetings, and a couple of games. In the Hanuman Chalisa application, which bagged the first prize in the ‘corporate’ category, music is played on the phone while doha (words of wisdom) are displayed in Hindi or English. The graphical application provides dohas both in detail and in brief. The Prashnavali application, which won the first prize in the student category, is based on Ram Charit Manas of Sant Tulsidas. To use this application the user needs to think of a question and then scroll the blinking dot on the location of choice. The answer to the question is presented in the form of a doha with English translation. Commenting on the quality of applications that were submitted, Vijay Mukhi said, “All entries in corporate and student categories demonstrated excellent skill and talent. It was like judging the first among equals. It was very difficult.” Mahesh Prasad, President, Applications Solutions & Content Group, RIC, DAKC, added, “We were pleasantly surprised by the stunning response from the student community this year.

The winning developers :

Corporate Category:

Student Category: