Interview with Milestone Winner, abkqz

Congratulations to the milestone winners!  You can see them all listed here.

Winning two first place spots at the milestone deadline was abkqz. Check out our interview with him about his apps and thoughts.

TC: What was your inspiration for coming up with your 2 milestone winning apps ideas?

abkqz: They came into my mind before the competition. Developing apps for mobile phones is my hobby; I have some applications published in Apple AppStore, so, I often think about mobile apps ideas (and, usually, have no time to implement them).

Both these ideas came from own experience, I thought ‘hm, it would be nice to have this on my phone’.

TC: How many ideas in total did you submit and which is your favorite (without giving too much away!)?

abkqz: I have submitted two ideas, I like Picture Map more, but, it doesn’t fit well with the Alcatel-Lucent API and is much more complex than SMS Notify. So, I think, I’ll implement only the second one.

TC: Is this your first apps idea contest with TopCoder and if not, what others have you taken part in?

abkqz: It’s my second idea contest. First one was Alcatel-Lucent App Strike Force 1, where we participated with Margarita as a team and won second place. I like 100 Apps contest more, because there’s more time to prepare a good description for ideas and there are more categories.

TC: Finally, you were just a first-time finalist for the 2010 TopCoder Open Design Competition.  How did it feel to win big and attend the onsite event?

It was very interesting to meet some people face-to-face =).  The event was organized very well, I can compare it with Google Code Jam and some other events I’ve attended – it was really great and well thought out. Thanks again for it :)

On the other hand, it would be nice to have some onsite activities for the Design & Architecture track. With the current structure it is completely impossible to compete for high TCO places with guys doing TopCoder designs/architectures as fulltime job.

TC: I lied, one more question…How does it feel to be the husband to the 2010 TopCoder Open Mod Dash Champion? :)

abkqz: It is very cool, I like it very much when Margarita is proud of herself :) I was quite nervous during first Mod Dash round, but, after it, I was almost sure that Margarita will win, so, it was not a big surprise :)

TC: Thanks abkqz and best of luck!