Bharain eContent Award Competition (5)

This morning I landed at Schiphol Amsterdam Airport at 6.00 am. It was a quiet flight and everything went to schedule, despite the fact that I changed my flight late.

The competition was completed yesterday with the recording of the 24 nominees and 4 special mentions. Having taken a photograph of the group of jurors, we said goodbye to each other. Of course, I hope to be back in Bahrain some day. This morning I received a series of photographs which reflect the jury event of the past days. (Just for contrast, I received today also a group photograph of the CMID07 conference in Lapland; I put them next to each other for contrast).









Reflecting on the content of the entries, it was clear that the category e-Business is the most important category of the competition. It is the only category which has 5 nominations. Followers are e-Culture, e-Entertainment, e-Government. E-Health and e-Inclusion, while in e-Science not one entry was nominated. It says something about the interest of the Bahraini. They are a busy business people and are serious about e-Government (more serious than many a European government). But the categories e-Culture and e-Entertainment do have 4 nominations in each category, but the spread of the subjects is not very strong. E-Culture has of course different entries than for example Egypt, which have the pyramids and the pharaohs, while Bahrain has little history. E-Entertainment has interesting entries, but games are not included. E-Learning has three interesting nominations and this category is improving over BEA 2005. The categories of e-Health and e-Inclusion have only two entries, while the entries in e-Science did not yield one nomination.

I personally conclude that the Bahraini are busy with e-Business and e-Government, in other words transactions and processes. Real content categories like e-Culture, e-Entertainment and e-Learning need improvement as do e-Health and e-Inclusion. The entries in e-Science did not come up to par at all.

In conclusion can be said that there are a few nomination which might be entered into the World Summit Award and will be serious contenders. It can also be said that there is still a lot of room for improvement of content. To raise the level of content some serious development and education is needed. Bahrain has the advantage that the lingo is Arabic; so there is no limit in the size of users (in comparison, the Dutch language limits itself to 22 million people worldwide).

When I left yesterday for the third time, I left very good friends like Waheed, Achmed and Abdullah, but also Leena and her organisation team. The contact with the jurors broadened my scope about life on an island in the Guld region and about ideals for a population. I hope to be back soon.

Blog Posting Number: 742

Tags: content competition, World Summit Award