DkIT Student Enterprise’s ‘Creative Calling Competition’ sparked the creativity in the students of the School of Informatics and Creative Arts over the course of the last few weeks. This competition required the students to create a digital representation of the DkIT Student Enterprise Programme for their chance to win a 16gb Apple iPad2.

The students were asked to present information on the DkIT Student Enterprise Programme in anyway digitally possible, be it a video, a piece of music, an animation etc. This competition gave students the freedom to practice and apply their creative skills by creating an artifact that they could potentially use in their portfolio in the future. The competition was launched on Wednesday the 14th and Thursday the 15th of November to celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week. The students of the department gathered by the DkIT Student Enterprise sign up stand in the P.J. Carroll’s building on those days and those that missed that chance applied through private message on DkIT Student Enterprise’s Facebook page. The final for this competition took place in P1071 of the Carroll’s building on the 3rd of December. Judges Matthew Green and Dermot Logue deliberated over the submissions for some time before picking a winner.

The winning piece was submitted by Andrew Browne who is currently undertaking a Certificate in Digital Post Production. His video will be used to advertise and promote the DkIT Student Enterprise Programme throughout the college year.

DkIT Student Enterprise launched their first Engineering specific competition of the semester on 14th November last. The Midas Challenge consisted of several low value items which students had to think creatively with and come up with a new product or service idea. The items provided were as follows:

Lollipop stick

Elastic band

Two cent coin

Laminated page

Balloon

Thumbtack

Play-doh

Paper clip

Tie-wrap

String

The rules were kept to a minimum in order to allow creativity flow and not to restrict any ideas. There were only two main rules. First of all, if an item is in the pack, the student can add more of them in order to complete the project. For example, if more lollipop sticks are needed, the student can get more themselves. Additional items not in the pack can be added but it was recommended to keep these to a minimum.

There was a large sign-up for the competition with 40 students in total participating. However, there could only be six finalists and only one winner. Although there were many great entries, there was very few marks between the top few. Cian Martin was announced as the winner of the competition for his idea and was presented the Apple iPad 2. His product, a ballista was created from the majority of the items listed. The only additional item he used was a straw to create the projectile. Judges were impressed when he fired the “arrow” to pop the balloon. DkIT Student Enterprise would like to congratulate Cian, and also thank the participants, finalists, and the judges Antoinette O’Rourke and Catherine McCloskey for taking the time to judge the competition.

DkIT Student Enterprise held their first faculty specific competition of the year in the School of Health and Science which was a great success and generated a great level of interest and participation. The competition took the form of an ‘Online Scavenger Hunt’ which was based around DkIT Student Enterprise’s Facebook page. The lucky winner then received the prize of an Apple iPad 2.

On the 14th November over 130 stuents of the School of Health and Science signed up for the competition and were then given the details of the Online Scavenger Hunt.  To take part, entrants had to answer fifteen questions which were based on information available on DkIT Student Enterprise’s Facebook page. Submissions were then made through Facebook. The idea behind the competition was to create a greater awareness among students of the School of Health and Science about the supports provided by DkIT Student Enterprise for anyone wishing to set up their own business.

By the closing date of 21st November there were numerous correct entries and these were entered into a draw which took place on Monday 26th November in the Nursing Building.  The winner was chosen by nursing lecturer Margaret Cotter who selected the winner’s name at random.  The winner of the ‘Online Scavenger Hunt’ was Nathalie Smith a first year Applied Bioscience student.

DkIT Student Enterprise would like to thank everyone who took part in the ‘Online Scavenger Hunt’. A special thank you goes to Margaret Cotter who took the time to draw the winner.  We hope that everybody who signed up for the competition gets involved in future activities which we will be running in the School of Health and Science.

This year Global Entrepreneurship Week took place from 12th November and to celebrate DkIT Student Enterprise organised a variety of guest speaking events throughout the college.

First to take to the stage was David Cawley of Allegro Acoustics who spoke to the students and staff of the School of Engineering about his experiences and how they led him to set up his company. Allegro Acoustics is a consultancy company which specialise in the field of noise, acoustics and vibration. They work within design teams for a wide range of projects including architectural, infrastructural, power generation, entertainment and industry.

The recent nominee for Chartered Engineer of the Year had not always considered engineering as his first choice of profession. After first finishing his mechanical engineering degree, he first tried his hand at being a musician. However after three years he explained humorously that his true calling lay in engineering. After working in industry for a few years, he decided to set up on his own in 2009. Since then, Allegro Acoustics has worked on numerous projects including the UCD Student Centre, the Dublin Convention Centre and the Bord Gais Whitegate Power Plant. Finishing off the talk, David sympathised with the students by stating that he found college tougher than working, although it built the necessary foundation of skills needed to get a job.

Students of the School of Health and Science were treated to a young Donegal businesswoman called Ramona Nicholas who starred in this year’s Secret Millionaire on RTE after setting up the hugely successful chain of Cara Pharmacies. The 35 year old who now own 12 shops across Ireland along with her husband spoke about how she always knew from a young age that she would one day own her own business.

After studying Pharmaceutical Science in Dublin she along with her partner now husband decided to buy their first pharmacy at the young age of 23. Ramona was adamant that hard work and determination not luck would result in success.

On Wednesday 14th Niall Harbison took to the stage in the School of Informatics and Creative Arts to speak to the students about co-founding Simply Zesty the hugely successful social media and online marketing agency in 2009. Niall, who was nominated this year for the ‘Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year’, shared a wealth of knowledge with the students after setting up a company from his spare bedroom with just over €10,000 in start-up capital.

Niall focused on encouraging students to gain as much experience as possible in their area of interest, “even if it means giving your time away for free.” He aimed attention at the importance of programming and how valuable a basic understanding of coding is. Using examples such as Microsoft in the 70′s and MTV in the 80′s, Niall expressed his view about the economic recession being a positive opportunity for new business ventures.

To finish off the week Anton Savage entrepreneur, broadcaster and author took to the Whitaker Theatre stage to share his story of running ‘The Communications Clinic’ a public relations, personal development and media coaching business.

The Today FM radio host and star of TV3′s ‘The Apprentice – You’re Fired’ encouraged students to undertake entrepreneurial projects with the right intentions, and off loaded valuable advice in the setting up and running of a business. When embarking on his own entrepreneurial journey he said “let’s start something to be proud of”. He also added that knowing your industry inside out is essential when setting up and running a business.

Anton referred to Bill Gates and Richard Branson when explaining that a business idea should be “on the crest of a wave or better than everyone else’s”. He urged up and coming entrepreneurs to focus on the business and not on the figures, as a business is a living, breathing entity made up of employees, organisations and customers.

The ‘Savage Sunday’ host outlined four essential elements that he thinks are needed to succeed: hard work, pro-activeness, kindness and luck. Anton finished off by referring to a famous quote by Einstein “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” while Anton argued that determination and learning from past failures is the base for success.

There was great interest and huge participation in DkIT Student Enterprises first cross-campus competition of the year, ‘The APPrentice’. Students from all departments in the college got involved in this brand new competition. The competition was split into three parts, first students had to come up with an app idea, then they were paired with a creative multimedia student to design a poster representing their app idea and finally a poster exhibition took place on Wednesday last outside the MPC to showcase the finalists’ posters.

The Idea

On the 15th and 16th of October over 190 teams signed up to enter the competition and were given their first task to come up with a brand new smartphone app idea. Submissions were made through Facebook and our page was swamped with entrants. There were a number of great app ideas and the decision was left to the judges to put eight teams forward to the next stage. The eight finalists were:

Lois Boyd and Shauna Tierney with ‘APPsolutely Happy’

Shane Greene with ‘WHATSTHEPLAN?’

Luke O’Brien with ‘PicWiki’

Cathal Byrne with ‘L.O.S.T.’

Aileen Murphy with ‘Lecture Lyrics’

Keith McConnon with ‘DkIT Handy App.’

David Connolly with ‘Livestock Valuer’

Luke Corr with ‘Where’s it @’

The Poster Design

These eight finalists were then paired with creative multimedia students who then worked in tandem to create an A1 poster to represent their app idea. The creative multimedia students who took part were Alanagh Brennan, Billie Jade McNeill, Robin O’Leary, Richard Malone, Richie Hunt, Paul Kirwan, Laura Traynor and Aisling McKenna. There was some great collaboration which resulted in outstanding poster designs. The finished posters were then submitted to DkIT Student Enterprise who looked after the printing.

A poster exhibition was held on the 7th of November outside the MPC to showcase the hard work and great ideas by all teams involved. The exhibition ran from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and it created a great buzz with many enquires of how to download these fantastic app ideas. Lecturers Mario MacBlain, Antoinette O’Rourke, John McDonald and Kenneth Sloane were presented the tough task of judging the final with criteria set out by DkIT Student Enterprise. After nearly an hour of deliberation a winner was chosen. The winning team was David Connolly and Paul Kirwan with the ‘Livestock Valuer’ app idea; both were then presented with a pair of Beats by Dr. Dre.

DkIT Student Enterprise would like to thank everyone who took part in ‘The APPrentice’. The ideas were very innovative and creative, and the work which was put in was of a very high standard. We hope every applicant gets involved in future activities which we will be running.

A special thank you goes to all the judges who took the time to judge the competition. Their help and expertise was greatly appreciated. We are also greatly appreciative of Harvey Norman who supported this competition.

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