Local e-Content Triumphs At The World Summit Award 2009
WSA SECRETARIAT: AUSTRIA/NEW DELHI
Australia, Austria, Canada and
New Zealand will walk the stage at the World Summit Award Gala on September 4,
2009 and collect the winning trophies for the world's best e-Contents. These
four countries emerged as clear leaders in the global contest held in the
framework of the United Nations and its follow-on activities to the World Summit
on Information Society.
With three winners each, creative content producers and
application designers from these countries topped approximately 20,000 other
products and projects from the 157 countries participating in the 4th edition of
the World Summit Award.
34 leading e-Content experts from all continents met
for the WSA Grand Jury in New Delhi, India in early April to consider 545
national finalists from United Nations Member States. "The trend to mobile
contents is slow in developing and the most interesting and socially relevant
contents are still to be found on the Internet" says Prof. Peter A. Bruck, WSA
Chairman. "Online also beats Interactive TV and has by far outdone Off-line DVD
productions in terms of the richness and diversity of quality content around the
world" says Bruck.
This year, the World Summit Award was entirely hosted
in India by Digital Empowerment Foundation with the complete financial support
from the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication &
Information Technology. On the occasion, DEF and DIT also organised a 40-
Country Digital Content Summit, the recommendation which is already submitted to
DIT for various considerations.
"In contrast to mass TV and newspapers, the new media
do not concentrate in one country or one region; we do not see a digital
Hollywood or digital Fleet Street. Rather, the most interesting e-Contents come
from smaller markets, and from smaller players. They appear to be much more in
touch with users and their communities. Local content, not global, triumphs in
terms of quality" concludes Bruck from the Jury proceedings.
Australia won in the categories of e-Business &
Commerce ("Karma Currency Website"), e-Culture & Heritage ("Twelve Canoes")
and e-Health & Environment ("Tree People"). Austria presents its strongest
products in the categories e-Business & Commerce ("Remediation Check"),
e-Learning & Education ("E-DysGate") and e-Science & Technology ("Water
World"). Canada is represented in the categories e-Culture & Heritage ("A
Journey into Time Immemorial"), e-Inclusion & Participation ("Homeless
Nation") and e-Science & Technology ("Genomics Digital Lab"), and New
Zealand features with winning projects in e-Learning & Education ("Our
Space"), e-Government & Institutions ("National Broadband Map") and
e-Entertainment & Games ("Casebook").
India registered its tally with two among the winners,
one being ngPay (e-Business & Commerce category), and the other was Web
Health Center in e-Health & Environment category as Special Mention.
The World Summit Awards were started as an Austrian
initiative in the framework of the United Nations World Summit on Information
Society in 2003. Today, it is the world's leading contest for excellence and
creativity and e-Content production and a global hub dedicated to closing the
digital content divide and narrowing the content gap between different regions
of the world.
The WSA are the only awards supported by a Public
Private Partnership between professional organisations, industry, governments
and UN organisations. The initiative promotes the most outstanding achievements
as a flagship partnership initiative of the UN’s Global Alliance for ICT and
Development and in close collaboration with UNESCO, UNIDO and a world wide
professional partner network.
WSA is a global not-for-profit activity governed by a
Board of Directors of world-leading e-Content and multimedia experts with its
global office at the International Center for New Media in Salzburg,
Austria.
Two awards each went to China, Egypt and Italy, which
have shown excellent results already in the last few years, but also to the
newcomers Ghana and Sri Lanka, showing that excellence in the content use of new
ICTs is neither a matter of size of population, nor is it driven by
wealth.
One award each went to Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia,
Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, India, Israel, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico,
Netherlands, Oman, Poland, Slovenia and Spain. Two newcomers from countries with
less developed content industries that returned home with 2009 World Summit
Awards leapfrogging technologies with creative innovations are Democratic
Republic of the Congo ("Congoblog") and Nigeria ("Mark of 'Uru").
Key sponsors of the WSA include the Internet Society,
which has been supporting the initiative since its launch in 2003, and Indigo
from Mexico, which won the WSA in the e-Entertainment category in 2007 and since
then entered into a long term visionary as the main supporter and
sponsor.
The WSA 09 Winners' Gala will be celebrated in
Monterrey, Mexico, on September 2-4, 2009 in collaboration with the UN GAID's
Global Forum. In Monterrey, the winners will also be presenting their
award-winning products at the two-day WSA Winners Conference and Exhibition,
starting on September 2. More Information on WSA and links to winner products
are available at www.wsisaward.org
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 157
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. |
