The annual SU App Challenge launched Monday, where aspiring campus programmers can create start-up applications.

Participants can collaborate with their peers at SU and other universities to program an application for a smart phone, tablet, desktop or any other type of web application, said Keisuke Inoue, the founder of the contest. But the project’s main coder needs to attend SU, he said.

The grand prize for the contest will be $1,000. Up to five other subcategory awards will award a $500 prize, according to the competition’s website.

Inoue, an adjunct professor in the School of Information Studies, said he believes the programmers behind an application are often underrepresented and overshadowed by the people who present the business model. He said he hopes the competition will reward the people who make the system and “put a spotlight on the programmers.”

Inoue originally created the challenge to motivate students in his Social Web Technologies class and create a place to demonstrate their skills to each other, he said. The added incentive to win a prize made the assignment more than just another final project, he said.

Inoue said he came up with the idea four years ago when he first started teaching the class. Last year, he started accepting students from other departments to participate.

Information science and technology graduate student Bryan Dosono is helping Inoue promote the event by going to classrooms and reaching outside the iSchool.

“This is a really great opportunity for SU students to showcase all the amazing projects they are doing and network with employers and different entrepreneurs in the area,” Dosono said.  “And it shows the students that they can apply what they are learning in the classroom to opportunities beyond the classroom.”

Dosono described the evaluation process as judges grading apps based on the “three I’s”: innovation, integrity and impact.

Last year’s grand prizewinner, Citizen Sort, won $1,000 for its website, which let users classify organisms through online games.

The app had already been up-and-running before they entered, but winning the challenge made the creators think on an entrepreneurial level and develop a long-term plan, said Nathan Prestopnik, Citizen Sort’s project manager.

Joshua Anderson, an information management graduate student, won in the Web App category in the challenge last year with his app, Uvalue.  The app promotes a community marketplace on college campuses by allowing students to securely make transactions with each other, he said.

“The difficult part (of building a company) is having the budget to do certain things, and (the SU App Challenge) gave me the means to follow through on certain plans I have,” he said.

Anderson felt that the biggest value of the competition was talking to people with different backgrounds.

“The benefit of doing that event is that you are getting the average person who is going to walk off the street and say ‘Hey that looks interesting so I am going to try it’ and that is the perspective you want to build your product around,” Anderson said.

Published on October 2, 2013 at 1:27 am

Contact Kate: kacapoda@syr.edu