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---
title: "Announcing the OpenPOWER Developer Challenge: Tap the Power of Open"
date: "2016-04-06"
categories:
- "blogs"
---
_By Randall Ross, Ubuntu Community Manager, Canonical_
One thing that unites my work at Canonical as an Ubuntu Community Manager with my work for the OpenPOWER Foundation is both organizations’ clear and unrelenting passion for developers. They both know that developers are the true musicians when it comes to making OpenPOWER “sing”. As OpenPOWER member GPUdb said, “We’re making the instrument but they \[developers\] are making the song.”
Without developers, hardware is like a high-performance exotic car sitting on a dealer's lot. We have the technology, but we need someone to drive that car to the Autobahn and “floor it!” (Having a relaxed speed limit helps.)
We know that our OpenPOWER community has plenty of drivers waiting for the opportunity to show what they can do. You may have noticed several developer-focused activities and news items coming from OpenPOWER over the past few weeks. That's no coincidence. It’s because we’ve been ramping up to share some very exciting news: we are pleased to announce the first ever [OpenPOWER Developer Challenge](http://openpower.devpost.com/)!
[](http://openpower.devpost.com)
Show us what you can do with OpenPOWER technology and you could win a whole range of prizes, from Apple Watches to an all-expenses paid trip to Supercomputing 2016 to showcase your work in front of developers and IT leaders from around the world! Just go to [http://openpower.devpost.com](http://openpower.devpost.com/) to register.
The [OpenPOWER Developer Challenge](http://openpower.devpost.com/) allows you to participate in two ways:
- Port and optimize your code in the Open Road Test, and use accelerators to go even faster
- Join the Spark Rally to train an accelerated deep neural network to recognize objects with greater activity, then show us how you can scale with Apache Spark
There is no limit to the number of entries you submit, so long as they are their own unique applications!
The submission period will open on May 1, and closes on August 2, so start forming teams and thinking of project ideas now!
To get started, let's take a tour of the Supervessel virtual environment that you will be using to build your application.