What is the ECCE App Challenge?

The ECCE App Challenge is a coding competition held by Esri Canada. It is designed to help promote GIS innovation and creativity within the Centres of Excellence that are located across Canadian universities and institutions.

Growth in the Number of Teams

Although the challenge first started in 2015 with just a handful universities and teams, it has been running every year since then and grown to include 24 teams competing from 11 universities across Canada. The chart below plots the number of teams and schools that have participated every year to show the growth that ECCE has achieved in getting students to participate in the challenge and get creative!

ECCE App Challenge Number of Teams & Schools

Looking Ahead to 2020

Although 11 universities have competed so far, there is an opportunity to also include Centre of Excellence students from the University of Toronto (including the UofT Scarborough and Mississauga campuses). If all of the Centres of Excellence participate with up to 4 teams, that would mean that we could have close to 50 teams competing in the challenge at once. More teams certainly means more competition, but it’ll also drives students to get creative with their apps and make something not yet done before.

Why you should compete too!

If you are a student in a university or institute with a Centre of Excellence and are thinking about taking part in this challenge, I strongly encourage you to do it. As someone who has taken part in the app challenge for three years in a row, two times coming in as runner up, and recently winning the challenge in 2019, the app challenge was an amazing experience for me to challenge myself, get creative, and make something worth putting on my resume (regardless if I win or not). Plus the chance to get an all expense paid trip to San Diego and attend the Esri International User Conference is just the cherry on top of the cake 🙂

With 2020 just around the corner, there is still plenty of time to sign-up, practice, and prepare for the next round of the ECCE app challenge. It is never to late to get started.

Thank you for reading. If you have any thoughts on this topic then feel free to comment down below, or message me directly.