DiGi Challenge for Change?s first ever #IdeaJam produces stronger ideas for more impactful mobile apps
DiGi Challenge for Change’s first ever #IdeaJam produces stronger ideas for more impactful mobile apps
Gathers idea contributors and industry experts to strengthen potential mobile app ideas
PETALING JAYA, 27 January 2014 - Last Friday, DiGi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd (DiGi) hosted #IdeaJam, the first ever idea accelerator session for its Challenge for Change (DiGiCFC) programme. This 4-hour interactive event gathered about 150 people including the Challenge’s best 60 idea contributors together with industry experts to refine the quality and potential of these ideas, in a bid to identify the season’s top 20.
Today, these shortlisted 20 ideators pitched their ideas to DiGi and a panel of judges consisting of DiGiCFC partners, who then selected a winning idea for each of the four categories: namely Learning & Edutainment, Health & Wellness, Discovering Culture, and Connected Citizen. The four winners, who will each go home with RM5,000 and a smartphone, will be announced in mid-February this year.
The 60 ideators for #IdeaJam were selected from close to 2,600 Malaysian-inspired mobile application ideas submitted for the Ideation Challenge, the first phase of DiGiCFC.
Stronger ideas for better social and commercial impact
#IdeaJam was a development checkpoint to help augment the quality of the top ideas submitted for Challenge for Change, and maximise the potential impact of the resulting mobile apps. It provided a conducive platform for ideators to interact with 60 specially selected mentors from the respective fields of healthcare, education, culture and citizenship. Input from the mentors helped build a social and technical context surrounding each idea, helping ideators make these ideas more compelling: having stronger commercial value, and a greater ability to address the social needs of Malaysians.
Joachim Rajaram, DiGi’s Head of Communications and Corporate Responsibility said, "We were impressed with the quality of ideas submitted for season five of the Challenge. We felt these ideas clearly reflected what Malaysians want in general, using mobile internet and apps to serve their needs. It was also interesting to note that easy access to public services on mobile apps seemed to be a growing interest amongst Malaysians. This was evident from the high percentage of submissions for the newly introduced Connected Citizens category.
"It would be exciting to observe how these ideas now evolve into full-fledged apps that leverage on functionalities like gaming, M2M and social networking to name a few, and to see how well-received these apps will be. We hope that the availability of new and relevant local content will give people more reasons to use and benefit from the internet, in line with DiGi’s mission to deliver internet for all Malaysian mobile users," said Joachim.
"It was also fantastic to see the positive energy between the mentors and ideators as they sparred with each other with a single objective in mind, to have the best version of these ideas emerge and have the potential to be developed into mobile apps that benefit as many Malaysians as possible. And this, I believe captured the value of DiGiCFC’s theme in Bringing Malaysians Together, One App At A Time," he added.
Some of the mentors who attended the event included representatives from the National Heritage Board Malaysia, KPJ HealthCare, Macrokiosk, GBG Business Group, netpreneurs, and Malaysian internet players.
Moving on to the next stage
Following this, DiGiCFC5 will proceed to the App Development phase where local app developers will be tasked to develop mobile apps based on the four winning ideas. In conjunction with this second phase, DiGi will also host #HACK!@DiGiCFC, a 36-hour non-stop mobile app hackathon to help accelerate the app development process.
DiGiCFC5 programme partners include the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (PEMANDU), 1Malaysia for Youth (iM4U), the National Digital Economy Initiative (Digital Malaysia), Google Malaysia and Microsoft Malaysia.
More information on this phase and DiGi Challenge for Change is available at www.digicfc.my.
Below are what some of the participants had to say about #IdeaJam:
"DiGi Challenge for Change is an excellent platform for youths to contribute to society. It is not uncommon for them to air their grievances online, so it is great that with this programme, they can now share their ideas on how to improve lives, via mobile apps. I believe the young ideators here are off to a good start."
- Efny Johan, iM4U Brand Management Group Director
"It is good that DiGi, via Challenge for Change, is providing people with the opportunity to share what they feel are great ideas for mobile apps. And I believe with some improvements, these ideas are able to be commercially sound."
- Rajiv Rishyakaran, Selangor State Assemblyman for Bukit Gasing, who was one of the mentors for the Connected Citizen category
"I’m really glad to have the opportunity to mingle with great-minded people here at #IdeaJam. I believe the feedbacks from the mentors were relevant and helpful for me to further enhance my idea making it stronger not only in terms of its commercial value but also how it can impact Malaysians socially."
- Lim Fern Yit, one of the Top 20 ideators, who proposed Jalan Jalan, an idea to empower local communities to become freelance tour guides through a mobile app