Educational Tour in Silicon Valley for SMART SWEEP Champion

The winning team of the recently concluded 10th SWEEP Innovation and Excellence Awards has embarked on a week-long educational tour of Silicon Valley in order to process and motivate them to explore the entrepreneurial environment. Fresh graduates Mark Anthony Colentava and Laurence Arguelles represented the team that created the winning device, CoinSaver, at the SMART SWEEP innovation awards.  CoinSaver is a kiosk-like device which enables user to improve the way they spend their extra coins by saving for the products or services that they want or need.

Using a mobile phone and a coin, anyone can start saving for any products on the KIOSK’s shelf. The user can save for the chosen product for the span of a month or more, then once the saving campaign has been completed. The user will automatically receive an SMS Voucher which they can later present to different stores within the area to claim the product/service that they saved for.

The students are accompanied by their faculty mentor, Engr. Faye Baret and school president, Dr. Delfin O. Magpantay. The BPSU delegates were also supported by city officers, Mayor Joet S. Garcia and Councilor Victor Baluyot. Three SMART personnel namely Stephanie V. Orlino, Cynthia B. Capua and Jeanne Michelle L. Bayhonan guided the whole delegation from Bataan.

The group visited the headquarters of Ericsson, Cisco, Google, Twitter and Facebook. The team also enjoyed a guided tour of Stanford University and the University of California-Berkeley campus. For their last activity, the delegates attended the 2014 StartUp Conference, one of the largest conferences in Silicon Valley for startups.