Our journey as innovators….
Everything began in 2015. It was a life-changing year for me and my friend Gimhan Wijayawardana. We were friends since the first grade and he was my partner in crimes😂. In 2015, Jayasanka Weerasinghe, a senior brother from our college, conducted an Arduino programming course for college students and we followed that course. In the beginning, we were like “WOW!!! what’s this” and it was a great whole new experience for us. After learning some stuff about Arduino, Gimhan and I started to do some small things. It was kind of fun. After the end of the course, Jayasanka bro and the headmistress of the IT club organized an intra-school exhibition. It was the first step with our innovative idea. Our innovation was a smart walking stick for the blind which had some new helpful features for the blind person.
It was where we displayed our innovation for the first time. We won the first place in that exhibition, so that was an unforgettable moment in our lives. After that exhibition, we started to develop our innovation step by step. We had new ideas but we didn't have that much tech knowledge to make them a success. So we learned more things from Jayasanka bro as well as through the internet. The innovation wasn’t perfect at that time but we didn’t give up we kept on trying…..
We were able to participate in several competitions and we won most of them. In the year 2016, we were selected to represent Sri Lanka at the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance(APICTA) after winning the all-island young computer scientist of the year competition. It was a huge opportunity for us even we haven't dreamed about competing at the international level. It was like a miracle for us. However, the miracle became true 😍. So the competition was held in Taiwan in that year and we had a great experience with the students from other countries. We were a little bit nervous before the judging of our project, it felt like having butterflies in our stomachs 😅. Then our presentation started. The judges were very friendly and then we were back to normal. That was our first international experience. In the end, we were eligible to win the gold award among other countries 😎. Participating in this event was a bit challenging because we had our ordinary level examination right after the day we landed back in our mother country. I’m glad to say that we had great results for the exam too😋.
After that, we won some all-island competitions as well. Again in 2018, we won the chance to represent Sri Lanka at the Intel Science and Engineering Fair which was held in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania USA by winning the junior inventor of the year competition. In APICTA it was an Asia pacific event but this was a huge competition. Participants from all around the world were there. The experience that we had in the previous competitions helped us to present our project perfectly there. Also, we won the 4th place in the category of embedded systems in that event 😎. This was also a challenging situation as we had to sit for the advanced level examination in the following year.
It was not about just winning the competitions there was a long process behind that. One thing was our project, we had to improve it as possible as we can. The next most important thing is the way we did our presentation. It’s like proposing to a girl, the only thing that matters is what you say at that moment 😜. The judgment depends on it 😅.So we had to focus on what to say and what we wouldn't say and we had a limited time for that about 10–15 minutes. We had to present our project there and had to do a demo as well. Teamwork takes a major place when it comes to a team project and I’m proud to say we had the best teamwork ever 😌 🔥. Apart from the project and presentation, the next most important thing is our parents, teachers, friends, and everyone who helped us in our journey. Specially I have to mention our brother Jayasanka Weerasinghe. We wouldn't be here without him. 😌❤️
That was all about our journey as Innovators…..