2007 WSA Grand Jury Croatia (6)

The weather changed overnight. The rumbling came from the direction of the city of Pula to the north of the island and it grew into thunderclaps. By the morning it started raining and by eight o’clock the raining stopped and it started pouring. The hotel is a sun shine hotel and was not resistant to the water from the sky. One person went to the beach for tan early morning swim, but came back in a hurry when the drops grew in volume. But a small accident happened when Jan Bieringa from New Zealand went outside, slipped in a pool of water and broke her arm below the elbow. The arm was banded and she taken to hospital for x-rays.

The rain is going to mess up the schedule for today. This afternoon had been planned as an afternoon off, during which people could tour the island or go to the city of Pula. But given the fact that it will rain all day and only will slowly let up tomorrow, the jurors decided to start presentations of three categories of the shortlist to the whole jury this afternoon. This is the best part of the entire jury exercise.
The jurors see roughly 64 entries, which are considered the best products in their category worldwide. The jury teams will have to make a presentation telling about the product and why the product is unique. This afternoon the entire jury will see the entries of three categories: e-entertainment, e-health and e-government. The other five categories are on the slate for tomorrow.

Last night after dinner there were two presentations. Mr Latif Ladid from Luxembourg made a presentation on his work in PIv6. I did not catch the whole lecture, but picked up that theoretically IPv4 as Internet is now will have no IP addresses anymore from 10/10/2010. Of course the date is symbolic as the can with addresses can be emptied earlier or later. He indicated that IPv6 yields more space for addresses. It is an interesting subject and I have asked Latif to be my weekend guest on the blog in the coming weeks; and he agreed. I was able to make a small presentation on digital paper. I had taken my iRex Iliad along and passed it around. No one had seen it yet and held it in their hands. There were a lot of question about applications such as e-books, e-newspapers and manuals. Especially the page turner of the iLiad caught the attention as an interface feature from many a juror. Of course, the price of roughly 650 euro made some people gasp for breath; the price will undoubtedly go down, when enough application areas are reached.

BTW There is an official WSA blog and there will be daily photographs.

Blog Posting Number: 858

Tags: World Summit Award, World Summit on the Information Society