Last Saturday, Lenovo held a media briefing to explain the program that it’s currently running; to create Indonesian “Doers” which can actualize their various ideas. This program is a competition called “Do Network”.
The registration of this completion has been actually opening since 8th of Dec, 2011 and until last Saturday more than 214 participants have registered.
Lenovo Do Network is basically a competition to collect the ideas, prototype, or the basic product from the participants correspond to various challenges that are given in every round. Apart from that this program is intended to create an online platform for actualizing the ideas; You can be a project leader, team member, voter, which later there would be 3 (three) mentors who can assist the process of developing the idea. This competition will be running in 4 (four) rounds, each round – 90 days consists of the various challenges.
For the 1st round, challenge is around the educational portable, traffic, product = progress and “ wild card” challenge – Free theme. The finalist from this competition will get the Lenovo deviceand the winner will be rewarded with USD 25.000 to develop their project. The minimum required age to join the competition is 21 years old and there is no maximum age limit (for Indonesia).
From explanation yesterday and the information that I read, some interesting things about this competition is the scope area. Lenovo Do Network have been held in 3 (three) countries; apart of Indonesia, It’s Russia and India. The winner from each country will compete each other.
A 2nd interesting thing is “the mentor”. There are 3 (three) mentors in this program, Budi Putra (Digital Consultant), Onno W Purbo (Informatics Technology Specialist), and Nurdin Nurdiansyah (LIPI or Indonesian Institute of Science Researcher). Budi Putra attended the last meeting, he explained that mentor of this competition will be having a great role and it’s becoming the strength of this competition.
Budi Putra has also explained the process of mentoring which will be running is quite intense. The mentors will accompany, give direction on what is lacking or what needs to be repaired. Budi also stressed to ideas or more regional inputs which can be done by the participants in the future in order to develop their ideas; thus the solution from the challenge can be useful for their community (Indonesia).
Many competitions about ideas, innovation, a part of being “the chance or channel”, it should give the solution of many problems that happened in Indonesia; Lenovo Do Network competition is also intended as the channel and the opportunity that can be useful by the innovators, the owner of the ideas by developing product that has inputs from the mentors and solving the problems in the society or running their positive ideas.
This program will be having an exposure, especially in the main event. Another strength of this program is the copyright of the idea or product that is sent by the participants. The works or the idea will be a proprietary of the participants, including the finalist and the winner.
Certainly the things that should be considered a part of choosing the winner is the post event; on how the advantage for the participants is not only prize, media coverage, or visit Lenovo Head Quarter. Surely this competition is focusing on the creation of opportunities and channels, however I do expect that another official collaboration can be established; for instance if there’s application or ideas that can be integrated with Lenovo device, it might be very interesting.
In spite of I do hope that there will be post event follow up, I also agree with Budi Putra that this competition can be a channel and an opportunity for the owner of the idea to develop their idea and to seek the solution of the challenges that happened in Indonesia. The support of Lenovo Brand and the mentors are also be able to open the interested investors or the parties who could help the development.
For those of you who are interested in obtaining details of Lenovo Do Network program may go to this link. The first round of registration will be closed on January 25th, 2012.
