The 9th INFOTEL exhibition, held its gala dinner and awards night on 1stNovember 2008 at the Trans Asia Hotel Colombo graced by Professor Tissa Vitharana, Minister of Science and Technology and eminent ICT professionals in Sri Lanka.

University of Colombo School of Computing won the awards for the Best Stall - Careers and Training - and the Most Innovative Product - Text to Speech in Sinhala. The Main Sponsors Dialog Telekom PLC won the awards for Best Stall - Communication and Best Display of Future Technology. The Best Stall - Hardware was given away to eSys Technology Lanka (Pvt) Ltd. Sala Enterprises bagged the Overall Winner award.

Roshan Rasool, Chairman – Infotel Lanka Society said “I take this opportunity to thank the government of Sri Lanka with special mention to the Minister of Science and Technology Prof. Tissa Vitharana and ICTA for the continuous support to infotel and the industry. The members of the organising committee comprising representatives from all member associations of Infotel Lanka Society of Sri Lanka deserve special mention and heartfelt thanks for their dedicated involvement. Finally, a thank you to our sponsors, speakers, exhibitors and participants for the continuous confidence placed upon us.”

The panel of judges included eminent IT stalwarts such as Shiraz Latiff – Chartered Institute of Marketing, Fayaz Hudah – ICT Agency and Ranjan Nadesapillai - Institute of Architects.

Another feature at the awards night was the presentation of Young Computer Scientist Award organized by the Sri Lanka Association of Software Industry (SLASI) and the recognition of the Sri Lankan representative of the International Olympiad in Informatics team. A special recognition was presented to the ICT Agency and to the father of ICT in Sri Lanka Prof. V.K Samaranayake. This year’s INFOTEL proved to be even more successful than last year’s with over 15,000 spectators and over 167 stalls.