The BOP Polytechnic classrooms resembled a mission control when I entered as a mentor at lunchtime on Day One of the Trustpower Mashup competition held over the weekend at the Bongard Centre. Whiteboards were a frenzy of creative ideas, tasks, and milestones as the teams jammed and hacked new digital sites on a quest to take-out the Mashup title for 2013. API and other programming lingo was being thrown around like it’s common knowledge as Google Maps, Facebook feeds, and live chat rooms were being integrated in websites. Business acumen wasn’t far behind as business cases and planning documents took shape. Great teamwork was exhibited too as defined project managers, technical leads, presenters, and marketers all played a role. Congratulations to all the teams – and watch out Zuckerberg.

The Equinox team from Tauranga Boys’ College won this year’s competition. The team worked on a business scenario that challenged them to combine the best IT, business planning, and marketing skills to attract more students to study at Avonmore in Tauranga. The boys, Dominic Panettiere, William Cleland, Duncan De Wet, and Samuel Keast, proposed to integrate the use of real stories from past students, live chats with mentors, Google maps and course information on an application that would work on different devices.

Judges were impressed with the students’ ability to deal with the technical challenge and produce a well-designed, functional response to the business challenge. The boys scored consistently across all judging criteria of planning, coding, design, implementation and their four-minute presentation. Equinox also won the Best Technical Mashup prize.

Competition organiser Bruce Fraser said that all nine teams in the competition worked hard over both days of the competition. The teams, from Tauranga, Rotorua, and Whakatane, all grappled with the various business scenarios presented to them and were able to call on help from experienced mentors from the IT and business world.

The Results:
The TrustPower Best Mashup: Equinox from Tauranga Boys' College
The Cucumber Best Mashup teamwork: Trident Mash from Trident High School
The Avonmore Best Business Model: Whakamashers 1 from Whakatane High School
The Technology Wise Best User Experience: Cerberus from Mount Maunganui College
The BOP Polytechnic Best Presented Mashup: Fluffy Muffins Tax Evaders from Mount Maunganui College
The BOP Regional Council Best Technical Mashup: Equinox from Tauranga Boys' College