HCM CITY — Applications are open for the inaugural KMS Hackathon, a 30-hour programming competition.

The contest, with the theme “30-hour hacking for social impacts”, aims to address current issues in various areas such as social life, security, public health, energy, environment, and transportation by applying advanced technologies, smart solutions, AI, and chatbots with natural language processing.

It is open to programmers, software engineers, IT specialists, project leaders and managers building software products, and IT and computer science students.

Participating teams will have to develop their products within 30 hours.

The US$10,000 prize consists of cash and gifts.

Besides, participants will have the opportunity to attract investments from funds and start-up incubators and mentoring from experts.

The jury will include Phong Bùi, KMS Technology’s deputy director of technology, Lâm Quang Vũ, deputy director of the HCM City University of Science’s IT faculty, Uy Trần, managing director of UpStar Labs, Tăng Hải Ngọc Sơn, winner of the 2016 Facebook Hackathon Southeast Asia, and representatives of local and international investment funds.

The evaluation will be based on the ability to utilise state-of-the-art technologies such as AI and chatbot as well as teamwork, creativity and business potential.

Registration is now open on the website of the competition at hackathon.kms-technology.com, and ends on July 10.

The final round will be held on July 14-15.

The contest is organised by KMS Technology. —VNS