Thank you to everyone that put forward their MVC nominations for February. We had some incredible entries, from people doing amazing things with mobile photography, to those cultivating a really great community built around Nokia – to all those people, we say a huge thank you!
However – it is my pleasure to announce that this month’s winner is the founder of Nokia Student Developer, Ram Kashyap. In 2011, when Ram was just 20 years old, he set about organising his very own Nokia community, specifically for developers and those interested in Nokia’s technological capabilities. In his own words:
“The idea of the community is to reach out to as many technology universities as possible, conduct workshops and hackathons on Nokia‘s mobile phone app development platforms, bring the awareness of the existence of mobile apps development ecosystem and get applications published on Nokia store or Windows Phone marketplace.”
(An example of the kinds of incentives Ram’s Student Developer Network provide for inspiring innovations.)
Since its inception, the community has grown and grown, now boasting over 5000 members of their Facebook group alone (and their own t-shirts… of course!)
Here are 8 (of many reasons) we’ve awarded Ram the title of MVC this month:
1. The community has reached 25 colleges / universities in 7 different countries.
2. They’ve trained more than 8,000 students in over 100+ events, whilst Ram has personally trained 10,000+ students on various occasions.
3. They’ve published close to 1000 applications from the community.
4. They have more than 10 million downloads as a community.
7. Students earn money with theirs apps; get devices and benefits from Nokia’s programs.
8. They’ve received a 75 thousand Euros worth of funding and more than 100 mobile phone devices for the community for app development, testing and deployment.
When asked why he voted for Ram, our MVC judge Mark Guim perfectly summarises it for us. He says: “He’s being a Nokia fan in a completely different level by bringing in more apps for Nokia users.”
Likewise, Clinton Jeff explains that Ram gets his vote because he thinks “it’s pretty awesome that he’s taken initiative”.
We have to admit – our judges are right. What Ram has done has opened up the wealth of opportunities that Nokia offers in terms of technology and for that, I’m sure you’ll all agree he is a very worthy MVC. We’d like to thank anybody that has taken part in Ram’s project and the whole of the Student Nokia Developer community – unfortunately however, there can only be one winner of MVC – and this month, it simply had to be the founder.
If you’re an aspiring developer who fancies getting involved, check out the Student Nokia Forum on Facebook or you can find out more information on their website.
You can also follow Ram on Twitter. You’ll find that when he’s not busy creating, managing and organising awesome Nokia based communities – he’s enjoying a nice cold beer or listening to music – something the majority of us can relate to enjoying. So please raise your glasses and sing a loud congratulations to this month’s MVC… Ram Kashyap!
And so – onto MVC March! We know there are still lots of people doing amazing things with the Nokia Lumia so be sure to nominate them!
To get your nominations in:
Send a tweet to @Nokia_Connects with the url to the piece you are nominating + the #NokiaConnectsMVC hashtag (for images, videos or tweets)
Send an email to Paul with the title “#NokiaConnectsMVC nomination” (for anything that requires more explanation or back story)
