The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), in collaboration with institutions including the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI), the InterAmerican Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and ConnectiMass are organising the Agrihack Talent Caribbean. Its main objective is to support the development of ICT innovations and entrepreneurship in agriculture by young people.

The Events will take place in two stages; 

National Events and the Regional Event.

The Regional Event will be held in October at the Caribbean Week of Agriculture in Suriname. 

The National Event is hosted by Quintessence Consulting Inc, a Microsoft Partner and hub partner for the Caribeban Climate Innovation Centre (CCIC). 

Each team of developers/designers/marketers will select one challenge on which they will develop their application to address key agriculture, agribusiness , climate change sector challenges. 

The Event is targeting all St. Kitts and Nevis Youth Innovators between the ages of 18-35 that have innovative ideas as well as capabilities to transform digital technologies to solve specific Sustainable Agribusiness and Climate Change problems. 

Teams of 2-3 persons are invited to participate. 

Team Composition could be comprised of the following;

•Entrepreneurs

• Innovators

• Programmers

•Marketers

•Designers 

• Social Innovators 

The event will comprise of two days focused keynotes on programming specifically ASP.NET, Microsoft Visual Studio, Bootstrapping, Authentication and Webservices.  Also introduction to business modelling and design would be delivered during this time. 

Teams will then have the 17th -18th to develop the next innovative app. 

The following prizes have been established for CODESKN Sustainable Challenge 2014. 

•Winning Team shall receive US$1000 courtesy CTA;

•Microsoft Scholarship valued at US$4000 courtesy CTTL;

•2 Laptops Courtesy Infotrans 

•All-expense paid trip for 2 to enter into the regional finals at the Caribbean Week of Agriculture in Suriname in October.   

The Prize giving ceremony will be executed in the ICT Week held in the Federation from the 22nd to the 26th of September, 2014. 

Regional Finals Awards include €5000 for first prize, €4000 for second prize and €3000 third prize plus business incubation support to assist in commercializing the innovation. 

$1,000 in prizes

Register to participate for Code SKN and attend 2 days Training  Sessions on the 15th and 17th of September 2014 and Participate in the Coding Event on the 18th Of September 2014 addressing at least one of the following six challenges;

1. Market Access/Entry & Penetration
How can farmers and buyers have an easier, real-time, and more effective way to inter-connect, share information, sell and buy agricultural products? How can logistics/distribution be better
streamlined? How can timely access to accurate and current market trends be favoured?

2. Access to Production information and Knowledge (Weather, Soil, or Pest Management, etc.)
How can farmers have access to regularly updated production information (especially the “How-to”
information) that will aid them in best decision making, in terms of Crop Selection, Fertilisation, Harvesting, Weather, Soil Management, Pest Management. How can knowledge and technology transfer be facilitated in that process?

3. Collaboration Apps for Farmers
How can farmer groups (including co-ops, associations) better exchange among themselves, use
and contribute to technology driven solutions? This would notably favour better production
planning, record planting and reaping, soil management, pest management, anti-praedial larceny best practices sharing?

4. Extension Service Information
How can Agricultural Extension Service Information be made more real time, robust, accessible and relevant to extension officers?

5. Climate Change and Water Management
How can ICTs help address, and create greater understanding of Climate Change issues for the
Caribbean Agriculture Industry?

How to alleviate and adapt in terms of preparation; farming choices, planning and sustainable production; access to, storage, management and strategic use of water; financing; insurance, risk mitigation & risk assessment tools to measure climate change factors and assess damage?

6. Agriculture API
Developing a Caribbean Agricultural Application Programming Interface (API) that will facilitate the collection, distribution of Agricultural information and ease of access across the Caribbean and
across the entire industry value chain. This development could build on existing open and public
Application Programming Interfaces: adding data, resources and building
more solutions. For Jamaica, it would be on the Harvest API developed in collaboration with RADA. A collaboration for a regional agriculture API is also an option.

• Section A: Relevance
  A.1 How relevant is the proposed concept and application to the challenges of the Agrihack Talent Caribbean A.2 Originality of Solution? A.3 Novelty of the Solution.
• Section B: Team Experience
  B.1 Is the Team Diverse in terms of Skills? B.2 Has the Team demonstrated Commitment to build out the Project through Future plans and projections
• Section C: Business Model
  C.1 Does the innovation meet a clear market need? C.2 Is there demonstrated Value derived from the Solution? C.3 Is there a credible business/revenue model?
• Section D: Technical Relevance
  D.1 How well did the team present the Application Functionality D.2 To what extent did the team present a Prototype D.3 To what extend did the team present future development needs for the Prototype and timeline - What will be done?
• Section D: Technical Relevance
  D.4 Did the team demonstrate innovative use of various technologies learnt in the course? And the Integration with design elements? D.5 To what extent has the team considered the User Experience and User Interface in the Solution Design
• Section E: Presentation
  E1. Overall Quality of the Pitch E2. Effective Presentation Skills Demonstrated