The SU App Challenge returns for its second year on Thursday, its demo day, when the final round of the competition will be held.

The competition will take place at the ICE box in Hinds Hall starting at 5 p.m., according to the contest’s website. This year the challenge has 25 applicants, which is more than double of last year’s number, said Keisuke Inoue, the organizer behind the contest. Almost half of the contest’s entrants are graduate students, according to graphs Inoue provided. More than a third of the contest’s entrants are also start-up projects.

The graphs also showed that more than two-thirds of the students involved are from the School of Information Studies, and that more than a quarter of the projects are coded in HTML/CSS.

Inoue said the project has three major categories: mobile apps, micro-controllers and websites, with mobile apps having the highest demand in the wider industry.

He originally started the contest for his class four years ago, but this is the second year that the competition is open to all of SU’s campus.

“I think it is something that we lack currently, creating a culture to celebrate people who make stuff,” he said.

He added that a good majority of the apps in the challenge this year address campus issues such as attendance and transportation.

He said there are four mobile apps that deal with Centro buses, including the Connective Corridor and South Campus buses. He said some of the apps utilize GPS features that track bus activity.

Another entry that he found interesting was a card reader attendance device, which allows professors to take attendance by having students swipe their Syracuse University ID upon entry.

“This year, there were a good number of apps that were solving campus-related problems,” he said. “You can see students are creating projects based on their experiences in life.”

Bryan Dosono, an organizer of the challenge, said he interviewed several of the teams for the competition during the preliminary rounds.

He said many of the apps aim to improve relevant problems for students in today’s tech sector, and have a lot of potential for investment.

“I’m overwhelmingly impressed just because a lot of the apps that these students are producing, I would expect huge companies to already be working on these problems,” said Dosono, a graduate student in the iSchool. “You really don’t see a lot of the innovation coming from big companies anymore, you see it coming from more start-up and local talents.”

The competition will have six judges, all of whom are professionals in fields related to start-ups, he said. The judges will base their decision on each app’s innovativeness, integrity and effects. There are three different categories, each of which comes with a $500 prize. There will also be one grand prize app winner, which will receive $1,000. The prize money comes from the challenge’s sponsors, which include Polaris, Oovoo, IDEA and the iSchool.

Inoue, the competition’s founder, said he encourages all students on campus to attend the event.

Said Inoue: “Don’t just make something and hide somewhere. Bring it to people.”

Published on December 5, 2013 at 3:05 am

Contact Alfred: alng@syr.edu

@alfredwkng