Dinesh Abeywickrama: ICT Strategist, Author, and Ph.D. Reading

Dinesh Chandima Abeywickrama has spent the better part of two decades moving between two worlds that don’t often overlap: the disciplined, research driven side of information technology, and the more instinctive, creative pull of broadcasting and storytelling. He’s a Sri Lankan ICT strategist and author, a professional member (MBCS) of the British Computer Society, and in 2009 he founded Laksara, Sri Lanka’s first online stereo radio channel, together with Indrasiri Suraweera. He holds an MBA from Cardiff Metropolitan University and is currently working toward a Ph.D. in Business Management at Management and Science University, Malaysia. Along the way, his writing has found its way into Oxford’s ITNow magazine, the British Computer Society’s own publications, Ceylon Today, and the UK’s Digital Intelligence Magazine.

Table of Contents

• Profile
• Career Background
• Education & Professional Credentials
• Research & Publications
• Featured Writing: Sports, Science & Culture
• Media Features
• Public Engagements & Recognition
• Conference Papers
• Philosophy & Reflections
• Radio Programs
• Mobile Applications Founded
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Connect with Dinesh Abeywickrama

A Career Timeline

This isn’t a complete list Dinesh has written on subjects well outside technology too, from sports biography to popular science but it gives a sense of how his published work has developed year over year.

Profile

Dinesh grew up in Gampaha, Sri Lanka, raised by his father Sunil Abeywickrama and his mother Mala Abeywickrama, who worked as a grade one officer at Sri Lanka Insurance. He went to school first at Bandarawatta Parakrama Maha Vidyalaya, Gampaha, and later at Bandaranayaka College, also in Gampaha a fairly conventional start for someone who would go on to found the country’s first online radio station and write for one of the world’s oldest university presses.

He carries the MBCS designation as a professional member of the British Computer Society, holds a BCS degree, and completed his MBA at Cardiff Metropolitan University known until 2011 as the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff (UWIC) in Cardiff, Wales. He’s now in the final stages of a Ph.D. in Business Management at Management and Science University in Malaysia.

For anyone who wants to verify the academic side of his work independently, his research is indexed across a few standard places: his ResearchGate profile, the University of Oxford’s ITNow author search, and his Google Scholar citations.

Career Background

Dinesh’s working life reads like someone who kept choosing the more interesting problem over the safer path. He started out administering Ananmanan Web and Miyurusara Online Radio, then moved into a role as Assistant Manager (Web) at Neth FM. Today he works as an Executive Officer at the Capital Maharaja Group. Sri Lanka’s largest media conglomerate which puts him close to the intersection of media, technology, and business strategy where most of his writing lives.

Education & Professional Credentials

His formal qualifications sit alongside a body of published, peer-reviewed and editorially reviewed work, which is a fairly unusual combination for someone whose day job is in corporate media rather than academia:

He’s a professional member (MBCS) of the British Computer Society the UK’s Chartered Institute for IT holds an MBA from Cardiff Metropolitan University, and is completing a Ph.D. in Business Management at Management and Science University in Malaysia.

Research & Publications

Dinesh’s published research and long-form writing spans technology, digital security, and perhaps less expected the history of science.

YouTube SEO: How to Rank YouTube Videos at #1 is a practical, hands-on guide to video ranking strategy, aimed at creators trying to get found on a platform that changes its rules constantly.

Life is a Cosmic Phenomenon: The Wickramasinghe–Hoyle Theory Vindicated, written in Sinhala, takes on the panspermia theory proposed by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and Sir Fred Hoyle the idea that life on Earth may have originated elsewhere in the cosmos. It’s a good example of how Dinesh’s interests extend well past his day job in ICT strategy.

Featured Writing: Sports, Science & Culture

Outside his technology work, Dinesh has built a smaller but distinctive body of writing on sport and science profile pieces that lean on a good story rather than a straight timeline of achievements.

Diego Maradona: FIFA Player of the 20th Century was written in the days after Maradona’s death in November 2020, tracing his rise from a childhood in Buenos Aires to two World Cup finals, the Hand of God, and the Goal of the Century.

Sachin Tendulkar: 13 Valuable Coins that Produced a Top Cricketer in the History of Indian Cricket tells the now-famous story of Tendulkar’s childhood coach, Ramakant Achrekar, and the coins he used to teach an 11 year old boy the discipline of guarding his wicket coins Tendulkar still keeps, and has said he values more than an Olympic medal.

Steve Waugh: The Greatest Test Leadership in the World that Began from the Memorial Cemetery looks at Waugh’s captaincy record and the unconventional way he built team culture around Australia’s cricketing history.

Interesting Stories: Albert Einstein collects lesser known moments from Einstein’s life the kind of anecdotes that rarely make it into a standard biography but say a lot about how he thought.

Sir Don Bradman: Interesting Stories does something similar for cricket’s most statistically dominant player, whose Test batting average of 99.94 remains one of the most cited numbers in sport.

Media Features

Ceylon Today

Are You Secure with VPN?, co-written with Inoshi Rathnasekera, came out of a period when the Sri Lankan government had imposed a series of social media restrictions. It looks at how VPNs let people route around those blocks, and is honest about the security trade-offs involved in doing so. Read it on Ceylon Today, or on Siyalla.

The Morris Worm Turns 30, also with Rathnasekera, marks the anniversary of the November 1988 Morris Worm generally considered the first major malware attack on the internet and traces how it forced the early internet security community to start taking network defense seriously. Read it on Siyalla.

Digital Intelligence Magazine (UK)

Cloud Analysis breaks down the different models of cloud computing and what “on the cloud” actually means in practice byline credited to Dinesh Abeywickrama, Ph.D. (reading), MBCS, MBA, BCS. It was later republished on the British Computer Society’s Content Hub.

ITNow Magazine / University of Oxford

The Self-Drive Dilemma, from 2017, looked at the security implications of self-driving cars at a point when the technology was still largely theoretical for most readers. Read it on Siyalla, or in the University of Oxford’s archived edition.

Before It’s Too Late argues that IoT privacy and security tend to lag well behind IoT innovation, and lays out where organizations should realistically start closing that gap. Read it on Siyalla, the Oxford archive, or on the British Computer Society.

British Computer Society, UK

Both “Cloud Analysis” and “Before It’s Too Late” were picked up by the BCS Content Hub (and here), and “Before It’s Too Late” was also featured in The Sunday Leader (archived).

Public Engagements & Recognition

Dinesh has appeared at a number of public and national events over the years, several of them documented in photographs.

Conference Papers

In 2016, Dinesh co-authored Technology Acceptance of Card-less Cash Withdrawal Systems: Sri Lankan Experience with U. P. Wijewardene, presented at the 3rd International Conference on Multidisciplinary Approaches at the University of Sri Jayawardenepura, and later recognized at the International Multidisciplinary Research Conference.

The same year, he and Wijewardene also presented End-User Acceptance of Online Learning: An Integration of Acceptance Models with User-Centered Design (UCD) Implications at the International Conference on Advanced Marketing (ICAM 2017), University of Kelaniya.

Philosophy & Reflections

Away from the technical writing, Dinesh keeps a running thread of shorter, more personal reflections on leadership, human nature, and the kind of questions that don’t have tidy answers.

“Leadership is helping the people around you achieve their own goals while guiding them toward a shared purpose. Always support those who act with integrity an honest person who succeeds tends to create more honest people, while a dishonest person who rises tends to hold others back.” Dinesh Abeywickrama, on Leadership

“The emotional roots of love and hate, patriotism and violence, sit closer together in the brain than most people realize closely enough that one can easily be mistaken for the other.” Dinesh Abeywickrama, on Love and Hate

“A digital mind only knows two signals true or false. A human mind carries far more signals than that, which is part of why we experience complexity, and sometimes conflict.” Dinesh Abeywickrama, on Simplicity is Happiness

“Life is like a spider web everyone is connected to someone, somewhere, in some way. When the time comes, we meet each other for a reason.” Dinesh Abeywickrama, on Life is Like a Spider Web

Radio Programs

Over the years, Dinesh has been called on as a resource person for TV and radio segments on internet security and digital fraud including a two-part series on Neth FM covering internet scams and cybercrime, which you can watch here:

• Internet Frauds, Scams and Cyber Crimes — Part 1
• Internet Frauds, Scams and Cyber Crimes — Part 2

Mobile Applications Founded

In 2009, Dinesh co-founded Laksara, Sri Lanka’s first online stereo radio channel, together with Indrasiri Suraweera a genuine first for the country’s media landscape, and still running today. (See Laksara’s official history and founders page for more background on the station.) He also went on to build Sri Lanka’s first citizen-journalism app.

Laksara Online Radio App (iOS version) streams Laksara described as Sri Lanka’s leading Sinhala radio channel in high-quality stereo, free, on both Android and iOS.

News1st U-Report App is a citizen-journalism initiative built for News1st, letting users submit news content from Sri Lanka and abroad directly to the country’s leading video news platform.

Siyalla MP3 Song App is an Android app for streaming and downloading Sinhala MP3 songs.

Siyalla Lyrics App is its companion, built for searching and reading Sinhala song lyrics alongside the music.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Dinesh Abeywickrama? Dinesh Abeywickrama is a Sri Lankan ICT strategist, author, and Ph.D. researcher, and a professional member (MBCS) of the British Computer Society.

What did Dinesh Abeywickrama found? In 2009, he founded Laksara, Sri Lanka’s first online stereo radio channel, alongside Indrasiri Suraweera. He also created Sri Lanka’s first citizen-journalism app, News1st U-Report, and later developed the Siyalla MP3 song and lyrics apps.

What is Dinesh Abeywickrama’s educational background? He holds a BCS degree and an MBA from Cardiff Metropolitan University, and is completing a Ph.D. in Business Management at Management and Science University, Malaysia.

Where has Dinesh Abeywickrama been published? His work has appeared in Oxford’s ITNow magazine, the British Computer Society, Ceylon Today, and Digital Intelligence Magazine (UK), alongside a wider body of writing on sport, science, and culture.

What is Dinesh Abeywickrama’s current job? He currently works as an Executive Officer at the Capital Maharaja Group.

Connect with Dinesh Abeywickrama

• Facebook
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• ResearchGate