The conference starts

At breakfast I already got into discussion with Paul Kafno, whom I met before at the Summit of the Future in Amsterdam last February. We reviewed the NO vote of the Dutch, talked about the European Commission and developments in the field of television, his specialty; he is an ex-BBC man. For the trip to the conference venue I was joined by Shaunneen, a Canadian woman, an expert on e-Government. In the afternoon I was the rapporteur for the e-Government debate.


The cour of the Palais

The venue Palais Niederostenreich is a beautiful place with an old history. It has recently been restored and remodelled. In fact, this is the first conference to be held in this building. It was the place where the 9 provinces of Austria got together 50 years ago and decided that after having been divided after the war into two protection areas by the Americans and the Russians that they would form together the state of Austria.


Waheed did make it!

Overnight more people from the World Summit Award circuit and the Europrix circuit had arrived. So it was a lot of hugging and kissing. They came from all places. Waheed of Bahrain had managed to get his visum and catch a flight in time. Our Philippine friend from the WSA, working in Indonesia had come. Melita from Slovania was there as the boys from Kibla. Ania from the UK was there as well as from Torino. I finally met Cai. Alexander from Germany was around. You saw the people around us looking about the ceremony of bear hugging.


Opening of the conference by Peter Bruck, who welcomes the Austrian minister Schussel

Peter Bruck opened the conference with a speech and stressed that this is the first conference on content as a result of ICT and creativity. He repeated his often made statement that there is much technology around and that we only use few functions. Of the 40 television channels we can get we use less than ten. The new telephones with camera we use to talk. So we should stop sometimes the developments and say no to developments and demand better content.