Students interested in mobile apps can satisfy their curiosity at the Notre Dame Mobile Summit 2012, a two-day event held by the University Council of Academic Technologies (UCAT).
Junior Yiting Zheng, the campus technology director for Student Government, said the summit features speakers, brainstorming sessions and discussion on Notre Dame's mobile strategy.
Zheng said the Mobile Summit has been in the works since last semester. She said Ron Kraemer, vice president of the University and chairperson for UCAT, wanted students to be very involved in the weekend's events.
"I had the idea of doing a competition among students, and as we discussed, we decided to have a mobile app idea contest," Zheng said.
Zheng said today's events include discussions on the mobile strategy at Notre Dame. Saturday is geared toward student participation in the mobile app idea contest, she said. Student teams will send in their content today for approval before their presentations.
"We have about twenty-eight registered teams right now who will be presenting five minutes each, and then it's basically a contest to see who has the best idea," Zheng said.
Zheng said students will share their ideas on posters accompanied by descriptions of how the app will function.
Highly sophisticated mobile apps are not necessary for the contest. However, some student teams are working on their apps already, she said.
Judges and audience will vote to determine the winners.
"We have three judges, and then a fourth prize will be decided by an audience vote," Zheng said.
Audience members will be able to text in votes for their favorite competitors on Poll Everywhere, a technology-driven audience response system used by Google and the US Census, she said.
Zheng said the contest allows for a wide range of academic fields to join and brainstorm together in one summit.
"We have some IT management students, two psychology majors, two science pre-professional students and all sorts of majors." Zheng said. "It's not limited to a certain group of students."
The Notre Dame Mobile Summit 2012 will be held from 9:30 to 4 pm today and from 1 to 4 pm on Saturday in the Mendoza College of Business.
