Finau Kaufusi won third place in the Pacific’s first-ever Hackathon Competiton to find an ICT based solution to 'Amplify Pacific Voices', held last month in Fiji.

The Tongan-Sydney based software engineer developed the 'Pacific Civic Society Hub', which the judges said had good functionality, user interface with a submission feature that stood out, when scrolling across different pages.

He said, a panel of five judges shortlisted the top three finalists ranking winners from first to third place. Each was awarded prize money with first receiving USD 5K, USD 3K for second and USD 2K for third place, in the competition held by the Pacific Islands Chapter of the Internet Society (PICISOC), in association with the Pacific Island Association of NGOs (PIANGO) and partners.

Mrs 'IIolahia, Executive Director of PIANGO, said they looked forward for solutions that complemented and enhanced the way they are currently operating.

“I am happy with the outcome of the judging, particularly with further insights provided by the other judges that enabled us to come to a final decision,” she said.

Developers

The Hackathon competition held on 12-13 April attracted 120 software developers from 24 member Pacific countries. Some joined virtually from across the region including Australia, New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Cook Islands and beyond. Others attended the event in person at the University of South Pacific (USP) Laucala Campus.

Most of the participants were in groups with an average of four members each with over 18 project submissions.

The winning project 'Talanoa'' was developed by a Samoan a team of four developers, Hilton So’o, Charlie Don Reed, Billy Chan Ting and Ainsof So’o. 

In second, was another group of Samoan developers with their project 'Toloa'. They were Alesena Lealofi Eteuati Jr, Andre Westerland, and Chia Chen Lin. 

The competition was held by PICISOC, in association with PIANGO, the European Union Funded UNDP Public Finance Management Project with supporting partners CERT NZ, Samoa Information Technology Association (SITA), Tonga Women in ICT (TWICT) and Oceania Cyber Security Centre (OCSC).

PICISOC enlisted Pacific-based mentors, judges and in-country coordinators. 

Finau who is an ex-student of Tupou College Toloa and Tupou Tertiary Institute, is a certified engineer in PHP programming and Certified developer in Drupal.

He is currently working as a software engineer for Football Australia in Sydney.

In addition to that, he founded Utupoto Technology, a Tongan registered software company that provides a range of software development services such as Mobile App to Web application and Desktop Application.

Throughout his career, he has been busy working as a full stack software developer to a number of companies in Australia, New Zealand and Tonga.