Chikka helps hone Pinoy dev skills

MANILA, Philippines - The quickly evolving technological world is always tougher on the software side, as more complex programs and systems are being introduced with inadvertent flaws.

The good news is, community building among hobbyists and advocates is already becoming a trend such that several small groups would sprout out, organize their own events and gatherings as a venue to share knowledge and learn from each other.

Webgeek, a community of Filipino geeks, developers and designers, recently organized the Webgeek DevCup Hackathon that encouraged its participants to “Build an App to Solve a Filipino Problem.”

Chikka Philippines, creator of the world’s pioneering instant PC-to-mobile messenger, together with other local IT leaders like Smart DevNet, IdeaSpace, RIM Blackberry, Mozilla Philippines, Sulit.ph and many more are keen on supporting such events.

In fact, each of the companies sent their best geeks to share some handy hacker tips.

Chikka associate director for research and development Melvin Fetalvero shared some pointers to help his fellow Web geeks enhance their code-writing speed and skills through free Web-based tools.

“What I have given them are just the best practices and techniques in code writing that senior developers from Chikka observe. This is our way of giving back to the community and hopefully they will receive it well. We also hope this will help them produce better results and more efficient applications that can aid Filipinos, as well as boost our IT knowledge base to keep up with global tech trends,” said Fetalvero, who was also the lead of the Chikka dev team that won the Best Open Graph App award in the Facebook Mobile Hackathon in Singapore a few months back.

Once a notorious term for information stealing and breaching computer privacy with malicious intent, the word “hacking” is quickly regaining its original meaning of “working around problematic systems.”

Events like the WebGeek DevCup Hackathon help Web and mobile app developers work toward improving the quality of today’s programs and social networking platforms.

There were 38 teams of the country’s promising programmers at the DevCup Hackathon wherein 24 teams were able to successfully beat the six-hour deadline and generate functional hacks.

Team APPNimbus was awarded first place for its outstanding app Bukas Palad. The app focused on managing donations and resources for disaster management organization systems.

Team TKO with its “Fund3Lives” app, and Team TBD with its “Sagip” app claimed second and third places, respectively. Winning the Most Popular App award was Team Audrey and its iTeks app.

“This is the first time we have received sponsorship to hold events outside schools. We are thankful for tech companies like Chikka who are one with us in our aim to further improve the Philippine Web development community,” said WebGeek Philippines founder John Arce.