FPT offers youth technology resources free of charge

After the pre-qualifying stage, more than 200 candidates across the country have been selected for Round 2 of S.M.A.C Challenge 2015. They were given FPT’s Citus PaaS accounts to write technology apps.

Just 2 months after its launch, the contest has attracted more than 68 teams with 300 candidates across the country.  

After Round 1, 48 teams with clear ideas were selected for Round 2. 26 teams of them came from Ha Noi and 22 ones from HCMC. Ho Chi Minh City University of Information Technology topped the list with 10 successful teams, followed by Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology with 8 teams, Hanoi university of Science and Technology, FPT University, University of Technology.

At Round 2, the contestants will be trained online. They will experience some of FPT’s latest products (FPT TV and FPT Play, DirectTV, e- ticket, Sendo etc.), developing their soft skills via group activities and especially exchanging views with talented technology experts and entrepreneurs.

In the evening of October 8, FPT officially activated the contestants’ accounts on smac.fpt.com.vn. With Citus PaaS accounts, they could create apps with such programming languages as NodeJs, PHP, Java, Ruby etc. Besides, they were given some smart services namely Vietnamese Text to Speech (TTS); Natural Language Understanding (NLU); Neo4j Graph Database and Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML).

Also, at the Finals, FPT will provide contestants with robots to develop their own products.

About S.M.A.C Challenge 2015

 Themed "Digitizing voice", SMAC Challenge 2015 becomes the first contest in Vietnam to search and develop interactive voice response (IVR) ideas. The total prize is worth VND 250 million (including cash and in kind). In addition, the contest also gives contestants a lot of career opportunities in the field of new technologies and increases the chance that they will get funding from FPT Ventures for their projects.

This year's awards include the first worth VND 100 million, the second worth VND 20 million and two third prizes worth VND 15 million.

Key dates for S.M.A.C Challenge 2015

• Receiving records (no later than September 25, 2015): Candidates register and describe their ideas via smac.fpt.com.vn. The organizers will select teams for the next round based on records.

• Selecting 16 leading teams: Contestants will be trained online. They will experience some of FPT’s outstanding products, developing their soft skills via group activities and especially exchanging views with talented technology experts and entrepreneurs. During the training process, the organizers will choose the 16 best teams for the semi-finals.

• Semi-finals (from November 14 to 15, 2015): 16 teams will demonstrate their products. 4 best teams will be selected for the Finals.

• Finals (from November 16 to December 19, 2015): 4 teams will be trained on Robotics Application Programming Interface (Robotics API). They will also run apps on virtual robots and join robot shopping game. In addition, the teams will upload videos introducing their products on social network so that users can assess and vote for them. The finals are scheduled to take place on December 19, 2015.