Universiti Teknologi Brunei (UTB) together with Ministry of Primary Resources and Tourism (MPRT), Ministry of Education (MOE), Ministry of Transport and Infocommunications (MTIC) and Authority for Info-communications Technology Industry (AITI) jointly organised the first Brunei Coding Conquest 2019 to provide a meeting place for the open-minded tech talents to fully exploit their programming skills and solve challenges.

This year, the Coding Conquest is organised by the School of Computing and Informatics (SCI), UTB.  In a quintuple helix approach, UTB with MPRT, MOE, MTIC and AITI are working together and creating a new shared value that will benefit all the parties and participants involved in the competition - in what becomes an innovative ecosystem.

The Coding Conquest 2019 is a competition that requires computing, programming and artificial intelligence knowledge for the tech minds to test their skills, win prizes, get discovered by venture capitalist and tech companies, and learn new things while having fun. It is also a hackathon and a design sprint-like event that not only involves computer enthusiasts to get into software development but also other like-minded people such as graphic designers, project managers and subject-matter-experts to collaborate intensively on projects.

The theme chosen for the Coding Conquest is “Smart Nation”.

The main objectives are to create awareness for the importance of coding and to motivate and improve the learning of programming skills and knowledge that are crucial to the support of a SMART nation.

Over 80% of Fortune 100 companies conduct coding competitions (hackathons) to drive innovation. Coding competitions and events are recurring globally which indicates it as a reliable tool for sustained innovation.

Further objectives of this competition, is to support our education system in realising Ministry of Education’s vision of “Quality Education, Dynamic Nation” by preparing our younger generation for the new demands of knowledge and skill arising from the Fourth Industrial Revolution. With having these objectives, registered participants will be provided with a pre-event workshop as part of the key aspects to a successful competition.

Unlike most other hackathon competitions, whereby participants were given lead-time to complete their project, in Coding Conquest, the problem to be solved and application to be built will only be briefed during the start of the event competition. This will encourage all team members to have a sound technical background for this competition.

The Coding Conquest is also designed as a continuation and extension to the previous competition such as Brunei Water Hackathon organised by BEDB in 2013, and B{CODE} organised by EGNC. This competition is also intended to support and prepare participants for at least three similar annual events such as the National ASEAN Data Science Explorer (both National and ASEAN), National BICTA (Asia Pacific APICTA) and the National CIMB 3D conquest.