The
official forum was held in two phases. The first phase took place in Geneva
from 10 to 12 December 2003 and the second phase took place in Tunis, from 16
to 18 November 2005. The WSIS was the start of the World Summit Award (WSA), which
celebrates its 10 years anniversary together with the WSIS in next week’s WSIS
Review 10+ in Paris. For the occasion I looked back at the rise of the World Summit Award.
Last
century
Forty years
ago the first US commercial electronic information services, Dialog and SDC,
were launched. Scientists, technicians and financials experts could remotely
reach central host computers in United States. In 1991 the World Wide Web was
started and penetrated societies all over the world. And despite the Internet
bubble of 2000, it was clear that the world was on its way from villages and
cities towards a global information society. In 2003 the ITU and the United
Nations initiated a platform for discussion and demonstration on this global
information society. One of its siblings
was the World Summit Award, a global activity to select and promote the world's
best e-Content and most innovative ICT applications.
After the
Internet bubble
At the same
time as the launch of the World Wide Web, the first industry protocol on
multimedia was reached which presented challenges to the new media as well as
the personal computer industry. People got used to personal computers as
digital encyclopaedias, larded with photographs, graphics and sound, were
bundled with personal computers. Business saw new opportunities coming its way such
as the merger between AOL and Time Warner, but went into an overdrive with
exaggerated visions, which eventually led to a bubble and deflation. However
digital information did not fade away.
In fact,
digital information increased and started to penetrate the veins of society
such as government, business, culture, health and learning. Examples of
multimedia applications sprang up all over the world on the desktop computers,
portable computers and smart phones and tablets. Digital information became digital content
and mobile content are packaged in apps.
From 2003
the World Summit Award has been monitoring these examples. More than 3.600
applications from 160 countries have been evaluated in the past decade.
Origin of
WSA
When the
ITU and the United Nations started the initiative of the World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS), the ICNM (International Center for New Media) in
Salzburg (Austria) looked into the UN initiative and started to work out a
formula on the basis of its experience with the organisation of the Europrix
multimedia competition in Europe. Backed by Europrix jury members, ICNM started
up the project World Summit Award.
By the
opening of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) on November 23,
2003 had contacted national experts in 168 countries. Through these contacts
700 entries were delivered. These were evaluated by 35 eminent experts during a
WSA jury event in Dubai (UAE). During the World Summit on the Information
Society (WSIS) 2003 in Genf 40 international winners were honoured during a
colourful award event.
2003, First jury in Dubai
Rules
e-Business
(and Commerce)
e-Science
(and Technology)e-Learning (and Education)
e-Government (and Institutions)
e-Culture (and Heritage)
e-Health (and Environment)
e-Entertainment (and Games)
e- Inclusion (and Participation)
Original categories
and between brackets the extensions.
Having
constituted the categories, the solicitation of entries was a subject. Having
an open submission could be uncontrollable in the amount of entries and jury
time. Eventually the Olympic principle was eventually chosen: every country was
allowed to submit one entry per country and eight entries in total. In this way
also the problem of having to choose from more entries per country was avoided.
Jury
The jury
members were chosen from the national experts and a balance was sought between
the continents. In total 30 to 40 jury members per jury session were invited.
Every jury session should not have more than 50 pct. of jurors from a former
jury. So far this has worked and has led to a self-refreshing jury body.
Besides the representation was so far a clear representation of the 35 jury
members of the 160 countries associated with the World Summit Award.
The jury so
far has met in person, usually invited by a country. In 2003 Dubai invited the
jury and in 2005 Bahrain was the host, but also Croatia, India and Hong Kong
did invite the juries. This presence of jury members suited the jury process in
which the jurors reached a consensus on the winners.
The World Summit does not have a slew of winners, ranging from one to three. However the competition has maximally five winners per category, regardless of the origin of the entry.
WSA, the
brand
The World
Summit Award started out as a bi-annual event, following the two planned sessions
of the World Summit Award on the Information Society in resp. Genf
(Switzerland) and Tunis (Tunisia). The pattern of the bi-annual event was
followed for the consecutive years.
However as
the world turn the information society is changing and so is the World Summit
Award. Having started out as the World Summit Award Global, multimedia entries
on various digital media were solicited: online/offline, internet/CD-ROM or
DVD, internet /mobile.
In 2007 the
World Summit Youth Award was instituted, a competition for the youth up to 30
years of age promoting the UN Millennium Development Goals. The WSYA is a
success as no less than 1150 young social entrepreneurs, web developers, app
developers and data scientists from 121 countries have applied for the WSYA
2012 competition. In the meantime a European event, called the European Youth
Award has been started in 2012 for the first time. The call for entries
generated 35 projects coming from 16 different European countries.
As mobile
has become a fast growing medium even overruling internet on personal computers
(desktop or portable) it was decided to start up a World Summit Award Mobile.
With the support of Abu Dhabi (UAE) a jury and award events have been set up.
The soliciting of entries has been successful so far. No less than 435 apps
from 102 have been sent in and are online judged by a jury of 50 worldwide
jurors.
2013 WSA Mobile gala in Abu Dhabi
www.wsa-mobile.org
General
trends
The
branding of the World Summit Award already indicates that trends are coming up
and become important. When the first session of the World Summit on the
Information Society was held, multimedia was still important. Compact disc
media functioned as packaged bandwidth. On CD-ROM or DVD enough bandwidth was
offered to play movies and intricate games as most networks did not yet offer
broadband at a reasonable speed.
But as the
networks grew in speed, depending on the country, multimedia productions
started to decrease, while internet sites increased. Besides social media, such
as blogs, second life, Facebook entered the scene.
However as
smartphones were triggered by the iPhone of Apple, blogging became
micro-blogging, even to the point of a capacity of 140 digits as in the case of
Twitter. The launch of the tablets by Apple (iPad) and Samsung (Tablet) created
a complete new world of apps, software routines filled with content. Just
before the launch of the tablets, e-reader caught on thanks to the nice,
non-interlaced screens, holding an amount of books not seen in the Sorbonne
university library in 1795.
Content
divide
From the
first session of the World Summit on the Information Society, the content
divide has been an issue. The interest in hardware was greater than the
interest in content. This was partly the problem because of the long production
time of digital content. So quality products such as games and sites were not
available and in great demand.
But when
smartphones and tablets started to supersede desktop and portable computers,
the content productions started to change. The apps are checked for basic
conditions by the store owners of iTunes and Google Play. Although these basic
conditions do not guarantee quality products, there is a turn in use. In a
continent like Asia the smart phone and tablets are prevalent and working in
favour of narrowing the content gap.
Jak Boumans is principal consultant with
Electronic Media Reporting in The Netherlands. He has been with Europrix juries
and all World Summit Award juries. He is a World Summit Award Board member and the
Secretary General of the European Academy of Digital Media.
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