红帽全球峰会Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the fourth regional Red Hat Challenge, a knowledge-based technology competition for students across Asia Pacific. In collaboration with the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), this year's challenge will be relaunched as Red Hat Challenge@Labs and will kick off in July.
This challenge provides our next-generation of IT professionals the opportunity to experience community-powered innovation through open collaboration and knowledge exchange on a regional platform.
A total of seven participating countries including China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, will open the Challenge to what Red Hat expects will be the largest number of students since its inception in 2011.
The theme for this year's Red Hat Challenge@Labs is “Smart Living, Smart Homes”, a concept consistent with building smart cities of the future. A recent report released by IDC forecasted 2014 as the year for Smart Cities1. In the report, Ruthbea Yesner Clarke, Research Director, IDC Government Insights Smart Cities Strategies, said, "This is going to be a big year for Smart Cities. Cities will move more quickly from research and evaluation to investment in pilots and the organizational structures to support Smart City initiatives.” The Red Hat Challenge@Labs aims to challenge students to develop smart home solutions for these smart cities while helping to address business challenges enterprises face in the world today and in the future with the use of open source technology.
In Asia Pacific, Singapore is gearing up to be the world’s first Smart Nation2. To realize this vision, one of the key focuses is to support Singapore-based tech talent and companies. IDA recently made two key industry announcements that will give a real boost to this year’s Challenge. First is the opening of the IDA Labs3, which is aimed at nurturing local tech start-ups, students, innovators and entrepreneurs to experiment and build with tech. Additionally, today’s announcement about IDA’s collaboration with Red Hat on Red Hat Challenge@Labs is designed to push forward community-driven innovation across the region.
The format of this year’s competition has evolved to emphasize real world experience while applying today’s computing environments. Together with Red Hat, IDA and the Institution of Engineers Singapore (IES) will be providing guidance to all the students during the course of the Challenge.
Registration for Red Hat Challenge@Labs starts on July 1, 2014 and will close on July 11, 2014 and is open to all full-time students from tertiary institutions such as universities, polytechnics, and private schools in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. The winner(s) will be announced at the finale to be held in Singapore on December 15, 2014
Supporting Quotes
Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, senior vice president and general manager, Red Hat Asia Pacific
“For the past three years, Red Hat Challenge has given students and schools an opportunity to learn, build, and create. This year, Red Hat wanted to move up a notch and go beyond the use of open source technologies in the real world. This challenge provides our next-generation of IT professionals the opportunity to experience community-powered innovation through open collaboration and knowledge exchange on a regional platform. We want to continue to bring together innovative minds, foster greater collaborations and discover tech talents to strengthen the open source community. With the support of IDA, we believe the students will benefit immensely and gain real-world experience from open source experts and IES's engineers as well.”
About Red Hat Challenge@Labs
Stage 1 (Starting July 14): Participants are given 12 weeks to build their applications and will have to submit the published link, along with a written pitch of the application. Submissions will be verified upon the completion of Stage 1 and verified entries will be made available for public voting. The top ten (10) submissions with the highest votes in each country will advance to Stage 2 – the semi-finals.
Stage 2 (Starting October 20): Semi-finalists are required to take the Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) certification examination*. Red Hat will select the top 2 teams / individuals (averaged results if it is a team participation) from each country to determine the finalists moving on to Stage 3.
Stage 3 (December 15): The finale will take place in Singapore on December 15, 2014, at IDALabs@NDC. Finalists will be asked to demonstrate and pitch their applications, along with a business proposal to a panel of industry experts. Judging will be based on technology successful application deployment, innovation and creativity of the application and its incorporation of the contest theme, quality of the business model, and effectiveness of the presentation/pitch.
Prizes
The winner(s) will win USD10,000 in cash and an internship opportunity with Red Hat in Beijing.
Registration ends on July 11, 2014. To register, please visit https://www.redhatchallengeatlabs2014.com/.
*First attempt of the RHCSA certification examination (EX200) will be fully sponsored by Red Hat Asia Pacific Pte Ltd. Costs applicable for subsequent attempts will be borne by the individual.
(1) IDC Government Insights, “IDC Government Insights Releases Top 10 Worldwide Smart Cities Predictions for 2014” Doc #24641314 , Jan 2014
(2) IDA Singapore, “Singapore Unveils Building Blocks of Smart Nation Vision”, https://www.ida.gov.sg/About-Us/Newsroom/Media-Releases/2014/Singapore-Unveils-Building-Blocks-of-Smart-Nation-Vision, June 2014
(3) IN.SG, “Labs, accelerator programmes to speed up start-ups”, http://www.ida.gov.sg/blog/insg/special-reports/labs-accelerator-programmes-to-speed-up-start-ups/, April 2014
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