WSA 07 Awards in Venice (3)

I am at Venice airport. My flight has been cancelled and I was booked to another flight which has now a delay of an hour due to the strike. No striker in sight, no placards to explain the cause of the strike. No open wifi to inform the travellers.

But there was at least some good news today from the TNO boys, good for an upgrade with KLM due to their looks. TNO had won a jury distinction for their mobile game Triangler. During their presentation they invited participants to the WSA 07 Winners’ Conference to partake on Tuesday morning for a game on the Plazzo San Marco (In Venice there is only one square; all the other squares are indicated as campo). And they did among all the tourists; in fact they did a trial run and after that it was serious gaming of high quality. One of the designers said that it was the best gaming session they had ever done.

All in all, this is a little bit of a disappointment after an exciting day and night. Yesterday I was at the global Forum, held at the island of San Giorgio, where a Benedictine monastery was built. But the monks were forced to leave by the armies of Napoleon. The place dilapidated badly until 1951 when the Cini Foundation started to restore the buildings and gave the monastery a cultural destination. These days it is used for conferences and special occasions like the G7/8, as it is easy to protect the island.











In the afternoon the World Summit Award Ceremony was held. After a quick changement from conference hall to theatre the show could start. Presenters were Peter Bruck and Manar Fasan AlHashi. All the categories passed by way of a short movie. It gave people present an idea about the scope and uniqueness of the projects I will treat the categories over the next days. By the end of the day all the WSA activities in Venice were over.









However on the program was still a concert and a dinner at the Teatro de la Fenice. This opera house burnt down in 1996, was rebuilt and reopened by 2003. It is a beautiful place (see photograph). The concert was given by the Academia Musicale di San Giorgio, a violin ensemble. They played Haydn, Brazinni and Chaikovski. The Chaikovski music was like a river shrouded with fog. The conductor was a Japanese lady, the first female conductor I saw in my life.

The dinner afterwards was fun. It was one of those conference dinners, with round tables. The food was okay. But the company (see photograph) at the table was hilarious. It was a mix of people from Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait, Russia, Mexico and Guatamala, Canada and the Netherlands. One of the big topics among the women was the television series Desperate Housewives. It was quite a release from the past efforts in the conference and the award ceremony.

The trip to Venice is over, but so far I got stuck in the end in Frankfurt.

Blog Posting Number: 915

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