For Immediate Release
June 22, 2010

Cañada Student Selected as Finalist for Juicy Ideas Competition

Alvaro Argote was selected along with teams from MIT and Stanford.

Alvaro Argote has an idea to help fellow students at Cañada College buy and sell used textbooks using a web site. The idea was so good, in fact, that it was chosen as one of six national finalists in the Juicy Ideas Collegiate Competition.

The other finalists were from the University of Washington in Seattle; Stanford University; the University of California, Irvine; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College in Asheville, North Carolina.

Alvaro’s project “irecyclemybooks.com” is designed to help students connect using the Internet to buy and sell used textbooks. “Every semester, students are frustrated by the high cost of textbooks,” he said. “I thought it would be convenient to have a web site where students could connect with each other to buy and sell used textbooks.”

This year’s Juice Ideas competition challenged students to create a software application that uses publicly available data to benefit their community. It was organized by Advantage West, the economic development group serving Western North Carolina, with support from Google and in partnership with DigitalChalk, developers of an online software platform for training continuing education.

Alvaro - with help from fellow students Dlila Rosas and Julio Beltran - competed against teams of three to five students who researched publicly available data to create their software application. They submitted their entry via a YouTube video, which was evaluated based on the ability to disseminate public data in a relevant manner; potential for community impact; usability; creativity, innovation, and uniqueness; business potential and scalability; and effectiveness of video demo.

"All the finalist teams approached the problem from different perspectives and technologies. Data usages involved everything from websites to multi-platform mobile applications," said DigitalChalk's Troy Tolle. "We expected great uses of technology and these students delivered."

"These students are engaged in the global community and their approach is very entrepreneurial," said Pam Lewis of AdvantageWest. "Technology-related enterprises are a core focus of the AdvantageWest entrepreneur program and we are excited about the future of this generation of entrepreneurs."

Alvaro learned of the competition from Chuck Iverson, professor of physics, engineering and computer information systems at Cañada.

While the team from Stanford won the competition with an entertainment application that allows users to discover and research leisure activities, Alvaro is continuing to pursue his idea.

“I really would like see this project become real because personally I have gone through this problem every semester since I can't afford new books because all my money is used to pay my non-resident tuition,” Alvaro said. “I think many people are going through the same problem.”

For more information, contact Robert Hood, Director of Marketing and Public Relations, at hoodr@smccd.edu or 306-3340