Otago Polytechnic entrepreneurs contest NBR Online Award

September 23, 2011

Otago Polytechnic entrepreneurs contest NBR Online Audacious Readers’ Choice Award

A software solution to data collection problems in the fishing industry, and a programme which remembers and manages the content that interests you on the internet, are finalists in an online award recognising entrepreneurship – and they are both the creations of Otago Polytechnic students.

The National Business Review’s Online Audacious Entrepreneur Readers’ Choice Award winner will be decided by online public voting, and will be announced in the NBR’s print and online editions on Friday 28 October.

A record 237 entries were received for this year’s competition. Two of the five finalists are businesses developed by third-year students of Otago Polytechnic’s Bachelor of Information Technology.

Fisherman Network Technologies’ Fish Basket is the brainchild of Rimu Boddy and Jeff Hardisty. It is software that offers fishers and their companies more time to sell their catches on the floating fish market, and allows them to provide data to the Ministry of Fisheries online, rather than through unwieldy paper forms.

Trunk.ly is an online tool devised by Alex Dong and Tim Bull, which keeps track of the increasing amount of content users are exposed to through social networks. It automatically collects links that users share, and stores them in one place so they can be easily found again.

Otago Polytechnic’s Associate Professor of Information Technology, Sam Mann, says the students can be proud of their status as finalists. “To reach the final five in a prestigious competition such as this is a remarkable achievement, and it’s gratifying to see their entrepreneurship and innovation recognised in this way. It also reinforces that entrepreneurship is a viable career option.”

“All our third year students develop real solutions for real business problems and that’s where Fish Basket and Trunk.ly first shone through.”

Further information about the finalists can be viewed and voted on at: http://www.nbr.co.nz/audacious

ENDS