IIT student wins bronze for business category at NBQSA
Ms. Maheshika Peiris, a Student of the Informatics Institute of Technology (IIT) was awarded the bronze award in the business category at the National Best Quality Software Awards (NBQSA) which was held on 17 October, 2013 at The Kingsbury Hotel. The NBQSA awards are held annually by the British Computer Society (BCS), The Chartered Institute for IT Sri Lanka to select the best and quality ICT software developed in Sri Lanka.
NBQSA is the only national competition of its type in Sri Lanka which has been, since 1998, granting opportunities to individuals and organizations for their outstanding contribution to the development of ICT Industry in Sri Lanka. It has provided a unique platform of opportunity to display and benchmark local ICT talents to the business industry and the world. Over the years the event itself has grown in recognition and prestige, both locally and internationally. Today, NBQSA is regarded as acknowledged symbol of achievement, and serves as an effective means to gain international recognition for locally developed ICT products, enabling them to successfully compete in the global market.
Speaking of her award Maheshika who studied for her degree at IIT in BSc (Hons) Information Systems with Business Management (ISBM ) said she is delighted to receive this prestigious award and feels well rewarded for all the hard work put into the development of this product “I consider it a great achievement because I received this recognition after being selected from a large number of applicants who applied for this competition. In addition, this is also the first time that NBQSA had an award for the business category and it feels great to be one of it’s first recipients. ”
Outlining the manner in which she obtained the opportunity to compete at the NBQSA award, Maheshika said that it all started with her taking part in the Cutting Edge competition, annual exhibition held by IIT to display students’ new projects of inventions which she displayed her development as a final year project. At this competition her project which was a solution named “Glamour Online” developed to identify and train Sri Lankan contestants to meet the requirements for international beauty pageants, was selected as the third prize. Thereafter she was encouraged by her lecturers and the staff at IIT to present this project at the NBQSA competition.
Speaking of her project, Maheshika said what has motivated her to design this project was that she realized that contestants in Sri Lanka who took part in international beauty pageants lacked many traits that were important to win a contest of this nature. She outlined these as a lack of knowledge of personal grooming, personality traits and communication skills. She also said that potential contestants are not aware of national model and beauty pageants taking place in order to apply for them and that they were also not aware of the procedures or the preparation in taking part in these beauty pageants.
She explained that her project provided solutions such as Chat Option, FAQs, online messages, and feedback options, where potential contestants could find up to date information on local and international beauty pageants, find Trainers’ profiles to contact, national director profiles, expert forums, and pageantry organizer forums and even chat with past contestants. Hence, it makes the contestant ready for the pageant with confidence.
Maheshika concluded by saying “The best part of winning the award was to receive it in front of the people who have always been there for me. Specially my mother and my supervisor Mr. Prassanna Pathmanathan who were both overjoyed and proud. I thank IIT for honing my talents and giving me the opportunity, the knowledge and the confidence to compete and win such an award.
Hence I would like to invite students who are looking at options of higher education to start off with to look at IIT as a definite option to create a better future.