Date: 29/11/2004
Source: Department of Science and Technology
Title: Mangena: Project Firefly National Competition Awards Ceremony
Keynote address by the Minister of Science and Technology, Mr Mosibudi Mangena, at the Project Firefly National Competition Awards Ceremony, Port Elizabeth University of Technology
Vice-Chancellor, Professor Snyman
Members of the Academic and Professional staff from Port Elizabeth University of Technology and other Higher Education Institutions Present
Senior Representatives from Microsoft
Students, Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
The 1996 Science and Technology white paper states that:
“…a national system of innovation can only be judged as healthy if the knowledge, technologies, products and processes produced by the national system of science, engineering and technology have been converted into increased wealth by industry and business and into an improved quality of life for all members of society”.
As we celebrate this evening of the stars, it is also fitting to pause and think about the progress we have made in developing ICT innovation capacity within our human resources since 1994. This is the same period during which the South African government took a decision to migrate to Microsoft Windows operating system. In the field of ICT, it is obvious that our industries and businesses have indeed made their wealth, but can we say that ICT has contributed proportionately towards the improvement of the quality of lives of all members of our society? What percentage contribution are South African innovators making towards the ICT products we are consuming and selling?
Tonight’s event is in honour of the students in ICT whose work reveals their preparedness to enter the world of work. Projects such as this one certainly assist our higher education system to contribute significantly towards narrowing the innovation chasm within our country by imparting skills that are essential in ensuring a smooth transition for students from college to the world of work.
The innovation chasm remains a serious challenge for our national system of innovation. Our Academic community is a source of much creativity. However, it is not often that their creativity results in wide usage and application.
The Project Firefly provides a platform for showcasing student creativity that can be turned into useful applications that have a high entrepreneurial potential. But it is also important to recognise sources of ideas outside traditional academic environments, and foster constructive collaborations. There is much innovation by entrepreneurs outside research laboratories who often make their contributions without the benefit of academic qualifications and the support of formal educational programmes.
One of the main thrusts of our national system of innovation is the recognition of innovation as a dynamic interaction of different role players. Traditionally, these players consisted of research councils and academic institutions. We can no longer afford the luxury of limiting our avenues for development only to specific players.
It has become necessary to promote innovativeness as a culture that can be adopted by all creative people, and not only those who are employed to do research. By distributing opportunities more creatively, the entrepreneurial spirit in everyone can be encouraged, which can lead to more student creativity resulting in innovation prior to their graduation.
Multidisciplinary collaboration should be emphasised in scientific human resource development. There are already exciting results from multi-disciplinary collaboration, some of them supported by Microsoft, in our research councils and higher education institutions. These can be seen in fields like human language technologies and human-computer interaction. We live in an age where we no longer need to specialise in a deep and narrow field to be innovative. It is equally possible to pursue a range of intersecting domains to forge a career – one of the positive spin-offs of easier access to knowledge in this information age.
Moreover, interfaces between disciplines are particularly fertile areas for innovation. Many innovations are a result of interaction of ideas across disciplines. The fax machine is a combination of photography and telecommunication. The Internet is a combination of the electronic information on a computer and telecommunication. More recently the “BLOG” is a marriage of the Internet and the essay.
The ongoing limited impact of ICT in our society – the digital divide, as we have come to know it - results in part from unexploited opportunities to bring smart, energetic young people into contact with old, seemingly intractable problems. The human and social sciences need to be mobilised to assist us in this challenge. In their own right, humanities have spurred a lot of developments in ICT. Gaming environments have led to sophisticated human interface applications. Modelling environments for architects represent another example. We should therefore involve our colleagues in other disciplines more actively as we strive to address issues pertinent to our development.
Our hosting of the soccer world cup in 2010, for example, presents exciting challenges and opportunities to drive a spirit of creativity and innovation, and for us to showcase our ICT capabilities as a nation. Let us focus on using our diversity of skills and disciplines collaboratively. 2010 is our chance to present ourselves on the world arena, and ICT is bound to play a pivotal role. Some of our challenges will include delivering multilingual content on a variety of new media. Our communications, language technology and linguistics gurus need to be inspired. There is already encouraging local work in this area, but more needs to be done.
Technologies to cater for the tourist boom are central. For example, location based mobile services that will make it easy for tourists to navigate our country while fulfilling their other needs, will be crucial. Earth observation satellites should be used to manage our road traffic better. This requires a combination of expertise from space science, town planning and ICT.
We encourage and applaud competitions such as this one because they encourage the entrepreneurial spirit in students through interaction with the private sector. Students have many times proved to be inventors in their own right; recognition of what they can do on their own should be a main part of their education. Indeed recent developments in our curricula have taken cognisant of this fact.
South Africa has for the most part been a consumer of information communication technology products. It is customary for new versions of software to come from multinational corporations. This is ironic in that resources required to develop software are rather minimal.
The required active ingredients are creativity and openness to multidisciplinary collaboration, attributes we surely possess as South Africans. There is no reason why more South Africans can’t develop software solutions for their own needs, and for the world.
Our consumer and vendor culture for software should be supported by an equally vigorous drive for local relevance and resourcefulness. The array of project entries for these awards is sufficient testimony that this is possible. A culture of innovation is what we need for our economy to grow.
The way we interact with technology is sometimes unique; our uptake of the mobile technologies has been nothing short of a miracle. This is a sign that we should develop our own expertise in mobile technologies. For example, South Africa is already regarded as a world leader in Mobile- or m-Learning. We will be hosting an international conference on this topic next year. Our innovators should take cue from these developments and further enhance their products to yield groundbreaking solutions.
Institutionalised innovation is no longer the only way; social change and policy reform in our country is making it increasingly easy for anyone to turn his or her creativity into innovation. The communications sector is one example where services traditionally offered exclusively by state owned enterprises would now be offered by start-ups using the existing infrastructure without any bias toward specific technologies. This will go a long way in diversifying communications services.
Similarly, innovative science should not be seen as a terrain only for research councils, higher education institutions or multinational corporations. We should be free to be resourceful as individuals and communities. Innovativeness ensures proficiency in the use of technology. We should get used to the idea that we must be able to inform changes in the technologies we use. It is in this spirit that inclusive development should be encouraged.
Technology has made it increasingly feasible for individuals to collaborate across borders and disciplines regardless of their qualifications. Judgement of expertise is increasingly based on merit, which has arisen from unexpected places, even in the developing world. South Africa has the necessary infrastructure to be on the forefront of these developments.
To all the entrants of this competition, I urge you to continue in your endeavours, and strive for perfection. You have shown that you have what it takes to contribute towards our country’s economic development.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Science and Technology
29 November 2004
Source: Department of Science and Technology
Title: Mangena: Project Firefly National Competition Awards Ceremony
Keynote address by the Minister of Science and Technology, Mr Mosibudi Mangena, at the Project Firefly National Competition Awards Ceremony, Port Elizabeth University of Technology
Vice-Chancellor, Professor Snyman
Members of the Academic and Professional staff from Port Elizabeth University of Technology and other Higher Education Institutions Present
Senior Representatives from Microsoft
Students, Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
The 1996 Science and Technology white paper states that:
“…a national system of innovation can only be judged as healthy if the knowledge, technologies, products and processes produced by the national system of science, engineering and technology have been converted into increased wealth by industry and business and into an improved quality of life for all members of society”.
As we celebrate this evening of the stars, it is also fitting to pause and think about the progress we have made in developing ICT innovation capacity within our human resources since 1994. This is the same period during which the South African government took a decision to migrate to Microsoft Windows operating system. In the field of ICT, it is obvious that our industries and businesses have indeed made their wealth, but can we say that ICT has contributed proportionately towards the improvement of the quality of lives of all members of our society? What percentage contribution are South African innovators making towards the ICT products we are consuming and selling?
Tonight’s event is in honour of the students in ICT whose work reveals their preparedness to enter the world of work. Projects such as this one certainly assist our higher education system to contribute significantly towards narrowing the innovation chasm within our country by imparting skills that are essential in ensuring a smooth transition for students from college to the world of work.
The innovation chasm remains a serious challenge for our national system of innovation. Our Academic community is a source of much creativity. However, it is not often that their creativity results in wide usage and application.
The Project Firefly provides a platform for showcasing student creativity that can be turned into useful applications that have a high entrepreneurial potential. But it is also important to recognise sources of ideas outside traditional academic environments, and foster constructive collaborations. There is much innovation by entrepreneurs outside research laboratories who often make their contributions without the benefit of academic qualifications and the support of formal educational programmes.
One of the main thrusts of our national system of innovation is the recognition of innovation as a dynamic interaction of different role players. Traditionally, these players consisted of research councils and academic institutions. We can no longer afford the luxury of limiting our avenues for development only to specific players.
It has become necessary to promote innovativeness as a culture that can be adopted by all creative people, and not only those who are employed to do research. By distributing opportunities more creatively, the entrepreneurial spirit in everyone can be encouraged, which can lead to more student creativity resulting in innovation prior to their graduation.
Multidisciplinary collaboration should be emphasised in scientific human resource development. There are already exciting results from multi-disciplinary collaboration, some of them supported by Microsoft, in our research councils and higher education institutions. These can be seen in fields like human language technologies and human-computer interaction. We live in an age where we no longer need to specialise in a deep and narrow field to be innovative. It is equally possible to pursue a range of intersecting domains to forge a career – one of the positive spin-offs of easier access to knowledge in this information age.
Moreover, interfaces between disciplines are particularly fertile areas for innovation. Many innovations are a result of interaction of ideas across disciplines. The fax machine is a combination of photography and telecommunication. The Internet is a combination of the electronic information on a computer and telecommunication. More recently the “BLOG” is a marriage of the Internet and the essay.
The ongoing limited impact of ICT in our society – the digital divide, as we have come to know it - results in part from unexploited opportunities to bring smart, energetic young people into contact with old, seemingly intractable problems. The human and social sciences need to be mobilised to assist us in this challenge. In their own right, humanities have spurred a lot of developments in ICT. Gaming environments have led to sophisticated human interface applications. Modelling environments for architects represent another example. We should therefore involve our colleagues in other disciplines more actively as we strive to address issues pertinent to our development.
Our hosting of the soccer world cup in 2010, for example, presents exciting challenges and opportunities to drive a spirit of creativity and innovation, and for us to showcase our ICT capabilities as a nation. Let us focus on using our diversity of skills and disciplines collaboratively. 2010 is our chance to present ourselves on the world arena, and ICT is bound to play a pivotal role. Some of our challenges will include delivering multilingual content on a variety of new media. Our communications, language technology and linguistics gurus need to be inspired. There is already encouraging local work in this area, but more needs to be done.
Technologies to cater for the tourist boom are central. For example, location based mobile services that will make it easy for tourists to navigate our country while fulfilling their other needs, will be crucial. Earth observation satellites should be used to manage our road traffic better. This requires a combination of expertise from space science, town planning and ICT.
We encourage and applaud competitions such as this one because they encourage the entrepreneurial spirit in students through interaction with the private sector. Students have many times proved to be inventors in their own right; recognition of what they can do on their own should be a main part of their education. Indeed recent developments in our curricula have taken cognisant of this fact.
South Africa has for the most part been a consumer of information communication technology products. It is customary for new versions of software to come from multinational corporations. This is ironic in that resources required to develop software are rather minimal.
The required active ingredients are creativity and openness to multidisciplinary collaboration, attributes we surely possess as South Africans. There is no reason why more South Africans can’t develop software solutions for their own needs, and for the world.
Our consumer and vendor culture for software should be supported by an equally vigorous drive for local relevance and resourcefulness. The array of project entries for these awards is sufficient testimony that this is possible. A culture of innovation is what we need for our economy to grow.
The way we interact with technology is sometimes unique; our uptake of the mobile technologies has been nothing short of a miracle. This is a sign that we should develop our own expertise in mobile technologies. For example, South Africa is already regarded as a world leader in Mobile- or m-Learning. We will be hosting an international conference on this topic next year. Our innovators should take cue from these developments and further enhance their products to yield groundbreaking solutions.
Institutionalised innovation is no longer the only way; social change and policy reform in our country is making it increasingly easy for anyone to turn his or her creativity into innovation. The communications sector is one example where services traditionally offered exclusively by state owned enterprises would now be offered by start-ups using the existing infrastructure without any bias toward specific technologies. This will go a long way in diversifying communications services.
Similarly, innovative science should not be seen as a terrain only for research councils, higher education institutions or multinational corporations. We should be free to be resourceful as individuals and communities. Innovativeness ensures proficiency in the use of technology. We should get used to the idea that we must be able to inform changes in the technologies we use. It is in this spirit that inclusive development should be encouraged.
Technology has made it increasingly feasible for individuals to collaborate across borders and disciplines regardless of their qualifications. Judgement of expertise is increasingly based on merit, which has arisen from unexpected places, even in the developing world. South Africa has the necessary infrastructure to be on the forefront of these developments.
To all the entrants of this competition, I urge you to continue in your endeavours, and strive for perfection. You have shown that you have what it takes to contribute towards our country’s economic development.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Science and Technology
29 November 2004
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