Tauranga Boys' College are the winners of the 2013 TrustPower Mashup competition held at the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic Bongard Centre at the weekend.

Dominic Panettiere, William Cleland, Duncan De Wet and Samuel Keast out-challenged nine other teams from Tauranga, Rotorua and Whakatane during a two-day event and were crowned winners on Sunday.

The winning Equinox team with TrustPower's Simon Clarke.

The competition, now in its third year, challenges students to work in teams using IT, marketing and business skills on real-life business scenarios with the help of experienced mentors to develop web pages or applications.

The boys, who name themselves – Equinox, worked on a business scenario challenging them to combine the best IT, business planning and marketing skills to attract more students to study at Avonmore Tertiary Institute in Tauranga.

Equinox proposed to integrate the use of real stories from past students, live chats with mentors, Google maps and course information on an application that would work on different devices.

Judges were impressed with the students' ability to deal with the technical challenge and produce a well-designed, functional response to the business challenge.

The boys scored consistently across all judging criteria of planning, coding, design, implementation and their four-minute presentation. Equinox also won the Best Technical Mashup prize.

Competition organiser Bruce Fraser says all nine teams in the competition worked hard during both days of the competition.

'The teams all grappled with the various business scenarios presented to them and were able to call on help from experienced mentors from the IT and business world.”

TrustPower's general manager of business solutions and technology Simon Clarke says Mashup provides TrustPower with an opportunity to build on existing connections with the education sector, and help with the development of up and coming technology talent.

'At the same time, it allows some of TrustPower's IT people to mentor and interact with young people who will go on to become the Bay of Plenty's technology brains and innovators of the future.”

Mentors from the information technology and business sectors provide advice and guidance to the teams working to meet set deadlines during the two-day competition.

The principal sponsor for the 2013 competition is TrustPower Ltd with additional support from Bay of Plenty Polytechnic, Bay of Plenty Regional Council and Holistec.

Students and teachers can find out more about the competition at www.mashupbop.co.nz

Full results are:

The TrustPower Best Mashup: Equinox from Tauranga Boys' College

The Cucumber Best Mashup teamwork: Trident Mash from Trident High School

The Avonmore Best Business Model: Whakamashers 1 from Whakatane High School

The Technology Wise Best User Experience: Cerberus from Mount Maunganui College

The BOP Polytechnic Best Presented Mashup: Fluffy Muffins Tax Evaders from Mount Maunganui College

The BOP Regional Council Best Technical Mashup: Equinox from Tauranga Boys' College