Secondary school teams are beginning to prepare ideas for the inaugural Mashup competition on March 26, and Mount Maunganui College team fluidesign has its eyes on the prize.

Team fluidesign from Mount College hopes to do well at the inaugural Mashup competition. Pictured back to front: George Van der Beek, Jessica Amos, Troy McKinnon and Jackson Preston. Photo by Bruce Barnard.

Mashup is a world first competition of its kind for secondary school students. The competition sees students taking a data source and putting it together with another data source to create a new program.
An example is taking DOC walking tracks from the website and putting this data with the Google maps application to create an interactive website where you could click on the walking track and see details such as the type of incline you would expect.
Fluidesign project leader Annie Welch says the team has met to discuss ideas and plan a strategy.
'We have had a design brief meeting, and the guys have been practicing coding.”
She says the team is discussing water sports as something they would like to work with, and that 'going into the competition having an idea of what we are doing gives us an advantage”.
'Three or four teams from our school are entered and we have told them what we are thinking about doing. They aren't sure what they want to do yet, but we aren't worried about sharing our plans.”
The brief specified teams include students skilled in marketing and design as well as computer programs. Students are expected to present a working project at the end of the weekend to a panel of judges. Fluidesign believes they have 'a good chance” at reaching a top spot in the competition, with the boys as skilled coders and the girls working on the design of the presentation.
'We know what we are all doing in the team,” says Annie.
'We will be doing the write up about it and the boys will do the coding.”
Winners of the competition will take the top prize of $1000. Annie says she and Jessica Amos will use the winnings to help fund a school trip to France later this year, and expects the boys will buy 'computer stuff”.
Seventeen teams from around the Bay of Plenty have entered this competition, taking place on March 26 and 27 at Bay of Plenty polytechnic. For more information visit www.mashup.co.nz