Salzburg/New Delhi, October 8, 2008 – The Digital Empowerment Foundation and the World Summit Award are organising together with the Center for e-Governance the South Asia Conclave on ICT & Digital Content for Development as part of efforts to strengthen the Digital Content Movement in the countries of the region.
The prime objective of this initiative is to promote quality contents as an essential element in the creation of a quality information society and to address the widening digital divides and strategies to bridge the content gap between the North and the South. South Asian countries play a critical role in advancing the Digital Content Movement thanks to the strong economic growth of the last years and the high levels of technical education and creativity among multimedia and internet professionals, companies and NGOs. Yet, as the biannual global contests of the World Summit Award have shown in 2003, 2005 and 2007, the potential is not fully used. Rather, South Asian countries remain underrepresented among the winners of the World Summit Award. Thus, the strategic direction of WSA is to strengthen the digital content industries and the creative development in the region by holding national contests in all countries and partnering with leading organisations such as the Digital Empowerment Foundation for conducting workshops, conferences and Global Digital Content Summits. WSA’s plan up to 2015 foresees a myriad of innovative content in fixed line and mobile Internet applications. WSA takes great pride at leading this vision thanks to the cooperation with the MANTHAN Award! BACKGROUNDER Boilerplate: The World Summit Award (WSA) was started in 2003 as part of the UN’s World Summit on the Information Society. It is a global initiative to select and promote the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications; to date 168 countries are actively involved. Through national contests and a global jury process, WSA demonstrates the local diversity and rich creativity of ICT use. WSA is a global hub for everyone who values the crucial importance of local content to make today’s information society more inclusive. http://www.wsis-award.org Manthan-AIF Award is a first of its kind initiative in India to recognize the best practices in e-Content and Creativity. It www.manthanaward.org was launched on 10th October 2004, by Digital Empowerment Foundation in partnership with World Summit Award and American India Foundation. The Manthan-AIF Award winners are awarded in a one day Manthan-AIF Award gala cum conference on e-Content and Sustainability. The Conference cum award gala is attended by people from different regions and background and represented various States across the length and breadth of the country. Emphasizing on the importance of e-Content & Creativity for and by the grassroots people, the Manthan Award 2005 recognized and awarded initiatives in the 8 WSA categories. www.manthanaward.org Contact: World Summit Award: Karin Gilberd (WSA Event & Community Manger) Tel: +43 662 630 408 43 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Best regards, Karin Gilberd Event & Community Manager World Summit Award ICNM - International Center for New Media Moosstrasse 43a A-5020 Salzburg, Austria Tel: +43.662.630408-43 Fax: +43.662.630408-22 Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] for more information: www.wsis-award.org please consider the environment before printing this email! -------www.icnm.net-------ZVR-Zahl 361985748------- _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://digitaldivide.net/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
