IEEE Day 2017: Where Tech Students & Professionals cross paths
It’s no doubt that IEEE Day 2017 was one of the most anticipated events on the calendars of all the young tech enthusiasts. Even though it’s a month of cold weather with the frequent downpour of rain, on the 11th of October, we managed to get to the University of Colombo School of Computing rushing through the traffic. Even though the event started off a little late than it was scheduled, we could tell from the crown that was swarming in that they were excited about the event.
Little known facts about IEEE Day
Celebrating IEEE day has been a long-standing tradition among the tech communities around the globe. With the global theme “Leveraging technology for a better tomorrow”, IEEE Day 2017 is the 8th edition of the celebration. We all have heard of the organization that came together in 1884 to share their technical ideas and provide a base for the technology that we see today. It’s amazing to how the tradition of celebrating this day has spread among young professionals, students and tech enthusiasts around the world. And Sri Lanka is no rookie to celebrate this day.
University of Colombo School of Computing has been organizing the IEEE Day with a corresponding theme for the past two years, making sure to keep up with the traditions while educating the young crowd. You can learn a little more about the IEEE Day celebrations organized during the past two years in our previous article.
What happened at IEEE Day 2017
After the lighting of the traditional oil lamp and formal greetings, the UCSC IEEE Day 2017 officially commenced. The first guest speaker of the day was Samudra Kanankearachchi, a solution architect from 99X Technologies with over 14 years of experience in the tech industry. Samudra’s session took a more pragmatic approach towards his session on Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning. He encouraged the students to focus more on gaining experience while experimenting with new technologies. One of the key highlights of this session was how he persistent he was at encouraging students to walk with “Do-It-Yourself”. Samudra did not fail to guide the students to the careers that are available and how they should choose it according to their passion.
After a delightful session with Samudra, the day moved forward with the next speaker. The second guest speaker was Dilantha Malagamuwa. Even though Dilantha has no experience in the tech industry, his experience as a rider and his life story inspired every one student present at the event. During his session, Dilantha showed the students that having a dream that you’re utterly passionate about can make it come true with hard work and dedication. Dilantha also gave a piece of advice to students and he gave a piece of his mind to the participants. “Commit yourself and have the courage to challenge your own dream and never to challenge anyone but yourself.”
What Happened Next?
Keeping up with the traditions, The Director of UCSC was invited to cut the celebration cake and speak to the audience about the importance of the event. And it was time for the final speaker of the day. Aruna Dissanayake, a database architect in Sysco Labs was the final guest speaker of the day. Aruna focused on educating the students on database architecture and how to choose the correct career for the skills.
After the sessions by the speakers, we found ourselves in the midst of a brain teaser game that was given to the participants. The students from each university were divided among 9 groups and were asked to build a tower using newspapers. The trick part of this was when the contestants had to answer questions (available online) and receive one newspaper page for each correct answer.
And the IEEE Day 2017 came to an end. We look forward to another IEEE event organized by the UCSC to celebrate and educate the young tech community about the advancements in the industry and gain a practical insight into the industry from the professionals.
james
October 25, 2017 at 6:59 am
Whats funny about this is IEEE stands for Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. There are two leading engineering faculties in the country and I believe they must host this event, but not the guys doing computer science.