We are calling all Developers to get under the covers at Wimbledon 2014 and help take the experience to the next level.  

Background:

The Wimbledon website, with 19.7 million unique users last year, is being enhanced with more mobile functions where users are able to create a personalized feeds with news from their choice of players, countries and categories of match, from data updated up to 140,000 times a day.

A new addition this year is “Hill vs World” which will be polling the results questions asked of fans sitting on Henman Hill via the giant screen, and pitting them against those of the television and internet audience responding via social media.

An IBM Softlayer based analytics console known as Wimbledon Social Command Centre will allow the social media team to view engagement from users in real time and tailor content according to reaction. This could take the form of everything from a conversation about strawberries in the rain to which photo of Andy Murray is causing the most stir!!!

48 tennis analysts are stationed around the site to manually capture data from the courts and feed it into the IBM cloud, which then crunches it into the statistics and graphics for the TV coverage and the second screen Slamtracker service

IBM has uploaded years of analytics gathered from previous championships to its private cloud. The cloud server is scalable and will be ramped up during the fortnight to cope with demand. IBM’s Watson will be flexing its elastic data muscles to ensure that data supply and demand are always met, constantly analyzing information to ensure that pertinent data is at the front of the cloud’s ‘mind’

Now it is your turn!

And the innovation doesn’t stop there! – What would you do to make the Wimbledon experience even better?

Now it’s your chance to create a prototype app which uses, creates, consumes, or analyses data in and around The Championships to enhance the fans’ experience on-site. Your code will create, consume, or analyze data in and around The Championships (either previously generated or real-time) to enhance the fans’ experience on-site.

You can also contribute your own data if you like. Don’t have any? That’s okay. There’s some on the website to download

We will have prizes for the Best mobile app and Best Data Insights.

To take part, upload your app to BlueMix and send us a 2-4 minute video demonstrating your solution’s use of IBM technology and include a 500 word max abstract.

We are starting this to run from October 24 – November 6.

The best apps will be invited to pitch in front of a live audience at IBM BusinessConnect from which we will pick our category winners, and the overall winner

  • Prizes – Two show court tickets for The Wimbledon Championship 2015 and the opportunity to work with IBM Interactive Experience team in the UK, to explore how your solution might be incorporated into the official Wimbledon mobile app for the 2015 Championships.

http://www.ibm.com/uk/wimbledon_innovation_challenge/