A poster by CPUT student Jason Pereira and supervisor Marlon Parker, dealing with the use of blogging in communities with tension, received top honours at the Tenth Annual Conference on World Wide Web Applications (ZA-WWW) held from 3 to 5 September 2008.

The tenth ZA-WWW was hosted jointly by CPUT and the University of Cape Town. It allows researchers from different disciplines, including business, education, technology and social science to submit and discuss work relating to the impact of the World Wide Web on their fields.

Pereira and Parker’s winning poster presented research into how keeping an online personal log can aid the rehabilitation process. Using social networking applications such as Facebook and Mxit, a group of former drug users and gangsters were encouraged to share their experiences and encourage each other in their journeys towards wellness. Pereira and Parker interviewed members of the group and used their findings to formulate ideas on how people living in communities affected by drugs and gangsterism can be empowered and healed through web technologies.

On receiving the prize for best poster, a laptop, Pereira noted that this was the first time he had presented at ZA-WWW. “To have a paper accepted was an achievement – and now this!” he said.

Second prize went to Simon Diab, supervised by Prof Pieter van Brakel, for the poster “Impact of information dissemination by virtual communities of practice in an SMME environment.” Prof Melius Weideman received third prize for work on the relationship between web page design and search engine rankings. Both posters were submitted by members of the CPUT Informatics and Design Faculty.

Special mention was made of African Journals Online, of Grahamstown, for the organisation’s work into increasing the accessibility of African publications.

The ZA-WWW conference is endorsed by the International World Wide Web Conference Committee and is attended by delegates from a variety of national and international universities. Prof Pieter van Brakel of CPUT is the Conference Chair of this series of annual conferences, which he initiated in 1999 while still at the University of Johannesburg. The University of Cape Town provided this year’s presentation venues.

A call for papers for the 2009 conference, to be held in Port Elizabeth, has already been sent out.

For more information about ZA-WWW go to http://www.zaw3.co.za .

By Ilana Abratt, Marketing and Communication Department

Written by CPUT News

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For the students of the Faculty of Informatics and Design at CPUT who entered the Sanlam Creativity for Progress Competition, Wednesday,15 October was one nail-biting day. After a morning and afternoon of presenting their business proposals to a judging panel, they received the news of who had won the R10 000 prize money.

The annual Creativity for Progress Competition, sponsored by Sanlam, is open to South Africa's foremost academic institutions and this year’s theme was “A better life for people in informal settlements"". Student teams of up to four members were required to conceptualise and present a project or business proposal that provides innovative solutions leading to improvement such as better living conditions, better medical facilities, access to water and access to electricity. The solutions had to be practical and possible to implement.

After weeks of hard work, all the students deserved to win but it was a team called United Four that was selected as the CPUT winners. The United Four team consists of Jason Pereira, Karel Strydom, Marjo Cilleirs and Bobby Moeng, all BTech Information Technology students.

“The 3 keywords that our proposal was based on are 'empowerment', 'wellbeing' and 'sustainability',“said Jason Pereira, team leader. “We looked at the problem of global warming and the impact it is having on harvest yields. We also found out in our research that fertilised has increased in price by 300% of the past 6 months. We offered an alternative which individual small subsistent farmers and gardeners could use to grow fruit and vegetables, making compost out of decomposable human waste.”

The team admitted that the biggest obstacle to the innovative idea is the ‘gross factor’ but as United Four member, Karel Strydom explained Asian people have been using human waste for thousands of years with great success according to their research.

“It is a free resource so cost implications are low and it is a way to ensure that human waste is not discarded into nearby rivers, a contaminating drinking and bathing water in many informal settlements.”

The judging panel included Prof Johannes Cronjé, Dean of the Faculty of Informatics and Design, Bart Verveckken, CV Botha, Dr David Boonzaier and Roelf Mulder all of CPUT. Eugene Grobler, and Danie Viljoen joined the judging panel from Sanlam

The next step for United Four is to compete against the other 15 teams selected from the other participating universities in the national heat of the competition where 4 semi-finalists will be chosen. Should they clinch the top prize they stand to win R100 000 for the team and R150 000 for the faculty. The other 3 finalist teams will each receive R30 000 and the faculties R50 000 each.

As for practicality and sustainability, Strydom said, “The challenge lies in convincing people, and we would like to do further research to see what the perceptions of people are.“

The Faculty of Informatics and Design is convinced that if any team could unite a plan and perception making it practical, it is the United Four.

By Monique Boucher

Written by CPUT News
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