“DIP – Develop, Innovate, Program” contest receives 21 project; 10 go through to the next round

The competitors have until the end of February 2010 to work everything out; then on 31 March they will give the presentations of their projects in front of the committee.

Prague, 26 November 2009 – The CZ.NIC association, administrator of the .CZ top level domain, yesterday announced the results of the first round of the contest for young talents in the area of ICT on the project website (www.nic.cz/vip). In this round, held during October, prospective participants could register projects focused on the development of new or innovation of used open-source software in the area of internet technologies, services and infrastructure. Out of the 21 project entries, the professional committee selected 10 to go through to the next round, which the competitors can now begin to work on. The designers of the short-listed projects can share up to 350 thousand Czech crowns at the conclusion of the competition.

“At the moment, the individual competitors are also being assigned mentors, who are colleagues from our laboratories. The project designers will consult with them on their work and then they will prepare for the final presentation in front of the evaluation committee together,” says one of the contest judges, Ondřej Surý, Manager of CZ.NIC Laboratories.

The competitors have until the end of February 2010 to work everything out; then on 31 March they will give the presentations of their projects in front of the committee. The awards ceremony is planned for 9 April next year.

For information on the selected projects, detailed schedule, judges, etc., see the contest website, www.nic.cz/vip. The media partners of the competition are the information portals Root.cz, ABC Linux, LinuxEXPRES and the magazine openMagazin.