Local university students are gearing up once again to win cash prizes and more in the Teleios Code Jam Competition. Teleios Code Jam this year will comprise 3 stages of competition guided by this year’s motto: “Code. Present. Build.” The final event takes place on Friday October 21 2011 at the JFK Lecture Theatre at UWI’s St Augustine campus. Participating teams from UWI, University of the Southern Caribbean (USC) and School of Business and Computer Science (SBCS), will be competing for a host of prizes from sponsors Illuminat, Microsoft, Digicel and of course Teleios Systems, for their software submissions and presentations in the annual team-based programming competition.

The competition, now in its 3rd year has generated tremendous interest from students following a series of road show events hosted at the campuses of the competing institutions in the lead up to the event. Interested persons were invited to information sessions covering a history of the competition along, with special sessions geared towards educating participants on the use of the Teleios MessageCentral Software Development Kit (SDK) as well as with tips and tricks for success in the competition.

“Using information technology to facilitate development in a multi-state region” is the theme selected for this year. Stage 1 invites participants to submit a fully functional software application according to guidelines provided for the competition. A regular feature of the competition is a submission from “Team Unbeatable”- a non-competing team consisting of in-house Teleios developers designed to showcase the endless possibilities that the SDK facilitates.

Stage 2 takes place on the day of the event and features participating teams giving demonstrations and presentations on their software solutions, with points awarded for various elements such as novelty, creativity, solution architecture, solution feasibility, user experience and five other categories. Bonus points are also awarded for solutions featuring an SMS component in keeping with Teleios’ MessageCentral’s SMS solution. The final stage of the competition is a quick challenge which will see teams racing to derive efficient solutions to a specific problem communicated to teams on the day. Microsoft has provided support to the competition since inception, with last year’s winners going on to also participate in Microsoft’s Imagine Cup this year. Mario’s is once again the food sponsor for the event. Coming on board for the first time is Digicel, offering special prizes for solutions with the best SMS component and Illuminat, the new first prize sponsor.

For more information please visit the Teleios Code Jam website or Facebook. Follow on Twitter @TeleiosCodeJam.