Troll: Hold up! Before you krzzzt-flicker the light bulbs in your brain, be aware first of the main theme! Your mobile application idea must be geared towards addressing a specific set of social challenges/problems found in the Philippines! So if you’re thinking of showcasing your secret epic idea for a game in the Kickstart-AppBridge Challenge – well, this isn’t the venue for it (though the Troll feels that the telcos should launch an app game competition locally. There are a lot of bored, creative minds out there and the Troll believes that the next Angry Birds/Temple Run/Draw Something success app story is just waiting to be discovered in our shores!).

AppBridge has partnered with Globe’s Kickstart Ventures for the pilot launch of “The Ideas & Apps Philippines Challenge” (the app ideation and development contest is a global initiative spearheaded by AppBridge; the whole thing aims to surface free/low-cost mobile applications that target social problems that governments are facing).

According to AppBridge, the Philippines is perfect for the contest due to:

• The high mobile penetration rate of the country (@ 91%)

• The English proficiency of Filipinos

• The high incidence of poverty which the contest may impact on

Margo Drakos, founder of AppBridge:

“We are honored and thrilled to have the opportunity to launch the Ideas & Apps Challenge pilot program in the Philippines… Local citizens know the challenges their community faces first hand. We hope the Competition would encourage people to share their innovative ideas or apps that address local problems through mobile phones. We are eager to watch the ideas and apps submitted through the online AppBridge Forum, and to follow the distribution and effectiveness of the mobile apps distributed to the citizens of the Philippines.”

Who or What is Behind This Contest!

Globe is the mother company of Kickstart Ventures, Inc. which functions as a local startup incubator. AppBridge and “The Ideas & Apps Challenge” is an initiative of the Clinton Global Initiative, The Forum of Young Global Leaders, and the World Economic Forum. Other major sponsors behind the app tilt are MorphLabs, Exist, and PhilDev. Minor partners are Babson College in Boston, Hapinoy (TnT), and MercyCorps.

Idea Game!

Step 1 is to submit ideas (this post is a bit late – the deadline for ideas is on June 05. The Troll checked the site though, and the pickings are still a bit thin. Hopefully this deadline will be extended). The app concepts should fall under the following categories:

• Education

• Health and Wellness

• Job Skills Enhancement/Training

• Entrepreneurship and Financial Literacy

• Civil Society and Transparency

Remember, your idea must focus on innovative solutions that make use of mobile communications (non app based ideas are also welcome; your concept can also make use of SMS or voice or a combination of all three elements).

Dev Go!

Step 2 runs from June to September 10 and is intended to engage developers/designers and business people to actually create and launch the winning ideas!

Minette Navarrete, President of Kickstart:

“The beauty of this challenge is that it puts people at the center of the picture, recognizing real world problems particularly in an emerging market like the Philippines.  It encourages and empowers them to act and create solutions, communicating that we seize opportunities to help each other and help ourselves make this a better world.”

Once the mobile solutions are developed, Globe will lend a hand in distribution.

Visit www.appbridge.org/Philippines to submit online ideas, and as mentioned, June 5 is the deadline (winners will be announced on the tenth of the same month). The site that will cover the dev side of the contest will go live from June 11 to August 31 (winners will be known on September 10 which is in time for the World Economic Forum Summit in China and the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting in New York).

Booty!

The prizes for the idea challenge:

• 1st Prize,    P25K

• 2nd Prize,    P15K

• 3rd Prize,    P10K

• People’s Choice Prize, P10K

The prizes for the app development challenge:

• 1st Prize, P50K

• 2nd Prize,    P40K

• 3rd Prize,    P25K

• People’s Choice Prize, P10K

You Will be Judged!

Below are the judges for the contest:

• Margo Drakos, founder of AppBridge

• Minette Navarrete, President of Kickstart

• Ernest Cu, Globe President and CEO

• Winston Damarillo, Morphlabs CEO

• Dado Banatao, PhilDev Chairman (Board of Trustees)

• Karen Davila, Broadcast Journalist

• Paolo “Bam” Aquino, President of Microventures

Troll: Just a note – the contest site is a bit slow and buggy, in fact, there seems to be no intelligent design to the links as you jump from regular to logged-in status. I’d like to get my hands on the guy who made the AppBridge site map so I can give him a good slapping using a very ripe banana. Also, best if you compose your idea on notepad first as there is a character limit rule for the answer fields, which, for the love of the Internet gods, should be communicated first to the site user (i.e. “please use up 250 characters only to answer”). And on a final note – don’t use the back slash and quotation symbols when typing in your answer. Trust me. Just don’t.