Ingenuity, invention and efficiency will be acknowledged tomorrow (June 12) when Griffith University again hosts the prestigious Opmantek Awards.
The event, to be held at the Gold Coastcampus, is an opportunity for high-achieving final year students within the School of Information and Communication Technology to demonstrate IT products developed in the 3002ICT Industry Project course.
The semester-long course is convened by Dr Peter Darcy at the Gold Coast campus and Dr Andrew Lewis at Nathan. Projects completed by student teams since the beginning of the year range from mobile application development for various businesses to advanced data analysis tools for major corporations.
“It’s all aboutputting emphasis on theminimum viable product. Thismeans the students are challenged for the duration of the semester todeliver a product that addresses their client’s initial core requirementsin the shortest possible time. That’s why efficiency is so important,” says Dr Darcy.
Jake Sieben and Matthew Anderson (standing) and Matthew Patterson and Jordan Gardiner are also vying for the Opmantek Awards
In the past semester, students have created work including:
a mobile app with a web-enabled database that is integrated with sensor technology to monitor movements of smart devices;
an online photo gallery that allows people to use QR codes to purchase digital images;
an iOS app that is an interactive learning tool to help children to read;
a web-based security system giving people permission management of their online content.
“This is exciting work and the awards are a great opportunity for our students, who will soon graduate and move into the workforce, to display their skills before the academic and industry communities. It also demonstrates their potential to be counted among the next leaders of the ICT commercial sector,” says Dr Darcy.
The awards are sponsored by Gold Coast company Opmantek, a leading developer of Network Management Software.
“We see the awards as a chance to contribute to the Gold Coast IT community. This is something from which we can all benefit,” says Opmantek CEO Mr Danny Maher.
“The awards call for an industry-based project and I believe this produces better graduates and also inspires the next wave of students coming through.”
Past winners of Opmantek awards include Village Telco, an initiative to build low-cost community telephone networks that can be set up in minutes for villages and other small communities anywhere in the world; and Kids @ GCU Hospital, an app designed to help children going to hospital better understand and be more at ease with what is happening around them.
