Information Systems students win Software Design Awards from Microsoft
Two Information Systems teams from the Faculty of Commerce at UCT won
prizes at the Microsoft Imagine Cup South African finals at the Champagne
Sport Resort in the Drakensburg during the vacation, competing against 43
teams from universities across the country.
Team Noesis, a team of 3rd year Information Systems majors, came third in
the Software Design category. They developed a web-based Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) system for the Grootbos Foundation. This
Foundation was established in order to manage and implement environmental
and social development projects for the Grootbos Nature Reserve on the
Southern Cape coast. The Foundation secures all its operating finances
through donations from external sponsors. Their current manual CRM system
was inadequate to meet the business needs, thus providing the student team
with the challenge to develop a system to manage all sponsor information and
interactions more efficiently, and to afford the business the opportunity to
grow beyond its current limitations.
Noesis was awarded R1 000 for each team member as well as
state-of-the-art keyboards and mice.
The UCT 4th year team, Team Revotech, comprising Rafieqah Isaacs,
Varaidzo Nyamakura and Warwick Wiseman won the Rural Innovation prize for a
community system called Common Ground that they hope to implement in the
Health Sciences faculty in 2009. The project, strongly supported by local
software company Open Box, will now go forward to the international
competition where they hope to be one of five finalists chosen to attend the
World Wide competition finals in Egypt in July 2009.
The team members each won an HTC phone.
UCT has an impressive record in the Imagine Cup. It was previously known
as the Microsoft Firefly Cup and the Department of Information Systems began
a long string of successes with first place in 2004 for Software
Development. The following year students in the department took second prize
for Software Design and in 2006 came first. In 2007 (when the competition
became known as the Microsoft Imagine Cup) the Department took first place
and in 2008 came third. An impressive tally indeed.
Left: Vis Naidoo (Director Citizenship,
Microsoft) congratulates students Warwick Wiseman, Rafieqah
Isaacs and Varaidzo Nyamakura.
Right: IS lecturer Elsje Scott, David Ives (Director of
Developer & Strategy Platform Group, Microsoft), Students Adick
Renner and David Barske at the prizegiving. |
Posted 25/02/2009 by
Carolyn McGibbon
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