META+ is an educational and entertaining experience organized to enlighten the university students of Sri Lanka on Social Media Marketing and Entrepreneurship through a series of workshops and competitions. The second phase consisted of a competition which was laid out in three stages where competitors designed a professional social media marketing-strategizing plan for a business product or a service.
At the end of phase 01 which was the workshop series, registrations were called for teams who would like to join the competition from all state and private universities throughout the country. The teams that entered the first stage were instructed to design a professional social media marketing-strategizing plan for a business product or a service. Out of these registrants, 10 teams were selected and were sent to stage two, as the semifinalists. In that stage, competitors were instructed to create a video. Then a motivational session for the semi-finalists was conducted by Nevindee Amarasinghe, Founder of GOOD PR(Pvt) Ltd. to cheer them up. Based on their plans, evaluations were done by the judging panel, and 5 teams were selected by the judges. And the most popular team was selected based on votes of outsiders, which was done via youtube likes and comments. Altogether 6 teams were sent to stage three as the finalists. Team Wandeling, Team Stark, Team Outliers, Team Mind Bogglers, Team JID Tech, and Team Zapatera were selected as the finalists, entering stage three. In between these stages an e-poster campaign was also held virtually through social media like Facebook, Instagram, and Linked-in, where interesting facts about digital media were published with the contribution of the marketing team.
The last round of the competition was held glamorously on 22nd January 2022 at New Arts theater, on University of Colombo premises from 10.00 a.m. onwards, as a physical event. The chief guest and guest of honor were Leo Rahul Aththanayake – Multiple District Vice President and Leo Gayanga Uththaravi – District President Leo District 306 A1. Stage three was a Q & A session, where each team was questioned separately by the judging panel, based on the videos and business plans which were submitted in the previous rounds. The event was brightened by a soothing singing item performed by Leo Vimandi and Leo Oshadha, and eye-catching dancing items performed by the Samudradevi Balika Vidyalaya dancing team. After the interactive session with the competitors, marks were awarded, and finally, the winners were announced. The Champions were Team Wandeling, followed by Team Stark as the 1st Runner Up and Team Outliers as the 2nd Runner Up. All the finalists were awarded a valuable certificate as an appreciation for their hard work and effort in reaching stage three in the competition. Champions were rewarded with a cash prize of Rs.35,000 and work experience for 6 months at Creative Hub while the 1st Runner up and 2nd Runner up were awarded prizes of Rs.25,000 and Rs.20,000 respectively.
Mr. Shawn Moses – Lead digital strategist at Creative Hub, former lead strategist at IKON, Mr. Irosha De Silva – CEO at Creative Hub, Mr. Tuhan Sapumanage – CIMA Lecturer at Wisdom Business Academy, CEO at Transpire Lanka, Dr. Dilushan Jayasundara, Prof. Deepthi Wickramasinghe, Mr. Ashan De Silva – Project Manager at Creative Hub, Mr. Yahiya Salih – Project manager at surge global and Mr. Thilina Opatha was the judging panel for the competition series and together did a great work to select the best out of the best innovators, which was undoubtedly the hardest task of all.
The honorable panel of judges who contributed immensely to a fair unparalleled judgment was appreciated with gifts of appreciation. Also, the two executive boards of the LEO club of UOC FOS and the EI club of UOC were appreciated for their utmost support and guidance shown to the organizing committee.
The project ended successfully giving the OC and the participants a lot of valuable experiences while covering all the intended outcomes and SDG goals. We hope that the whole META+ series was a new experience to all the participants and they enjoyed the sessions while gathering a vast knowledge from the workshop series as well as from the judge panel during the interactive sessions. We hope to conduct many such projects in the future as well.
Article Credits To Our Blogger: Sandani Iresha (Faculty Of Science | 1st Year Student)
thanks for tell me about a META+ – Phase II