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The Konica Minolta International University Contest (IUC), organised and sponsored by Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe, gives students from across the globe a unique opportunity to take part in an innovative international project that bridges the worlds of academia and business. Konica Minolta’s aim is to support tertiary education institutions in building the digital campus.
Students are given the unique opportunity to work with Konica Minolta to analyse a current document or information workflow within their universities and to propose an innovative improvement. Prizes are awarded at both national and international levels for the best proposals.
Alten Hulme, director of Sales and Marketing at Konica Minolta South Africa (KMSA) commented, “Out of 26 universities in nine provinces, there has to be potential to submit an entry that is of world-class standard. There are already many universities in South Africa who are Konica Minolta users and this competition offers an ideal opportunity to the company to interact with both the students and staff of those institutions.”
This year, KMSA received more than 15 team entries from universities across the country, and all submitted projects were of a particularly high-standard. While the local judges faced a difficult task to find a winner, they said that the entry from the UCT team stood out clearly.
UCT’s winning submission set out a workable solution to streamline pre-registration for international students, not only making it less time-consuming for students but also more reliable and efficient.
The judges made it clear that the quality of the research carried out by the UCT team was the deciding factor. The team’s research included excellent statistics that were easy to understand and highlighted the relationship between what they researched, why they chose this specific topic and the eventual conclusion.
The ultimate prize
Professor Lisa Seymour, from the Department of Information Systems, has been the team’s mentor throughout the process. She was instrumental in coaching and developing the team, which consisted of Philicia Behari, BCom(Hons) Information Systems; Kushal Cuppoor, BSc(Hons) Computer Science; Shana Maduray, BCom Information Systems; Tokollo Noko, BCom(Hons) Information Systems; and Shanay Paideya, BCom(Hons) Information Systems.
Having won the national leg of the contest, the five students will be representing UCT and South Africa at the finals in Amsterdam on 21 April 2018. Richard Berg, the manager of Corporate Business Solutions at the KMSA Cape Town branch, will be accompanying the team for the three-day trip.
During their stay, the students will receive their national winner certification, visit the Konic Minolta facilities, and participate in the international award event. This will include key note speeches by significant names from the world of innovation, business and academia; the presentation of the national winning student proposals; and opportunities for networking with IUC students from across Europe.
Coming up against four European teams in Amsterdam, the UCT team will be competing for the ultimate prize of an all-expenses-paid trip to the International Web Summit in Lisbon in November 2018.