2007 WSA Grand Jury Croatia (3)

I came into Brijuni after the welcome dinner. But I met an enthusiastic crowd. Jurors of the Dubai edition and also jurors of the Bahrain edition. It was great to see them back. I started to meet also the new jurors in as far as they did not disappear to their hotel room, catching up from jetlag and days of travelling. The Salzburg team was there as well as the tutor group, a bunch of nice young Croatian students, who will be assisting the jurors. When I woke up this morning, this was the view from the room.

By 10 o'clock the jury were in full swing. An introduction is geven to the World Summit Award and the Eminent Expert jurors are introducing themselves.. Some statistics: 32 jurors, more than 600 entries in eight categories; the 600 entries have been entered by 159 countries.

The jurors’ works consists of three rounds of evaluation. In the first round every category will have four jurors in one team. The assignment of this round is to decrease the number of entries for closer inspection. In the second round, the teams will move to another category. In this phase the jurors can spend more time to familiarise themselves with the selected entries. The goal of the second round is whitled down to maximally ten entries per category. As five entries are needed for the last selection phase, the entries per category are presented to the entire jury and voted in or out. The last five entries that survive are the winners; there is not a single winner with runner-ups. Just for logistics, every juror sees more than 190 entries in eight days.

Every participating country could enter one entry per category. Theoretically 159 countries time eight entries in eight categories could have entered a total of 1272 products and services; but not all countries entered an entry in every category. For example for the Netherlands the national expert Bas Verhart has made a selection of eight entries. To give you an idea of the type of entries, I will use the list as it was published in the press release of the past week in the Dutch media:
1. e-Government: http://www.blob.nl/, a web game by students for the municipality of Utrecht;
2. e-Health: http://www.womenonweb.org/; Women on Waves in co-operation with Mediamatic;
3. e-Learning: http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/webspel/rembrandt?lang=nl; http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/webspel/nachtwacht?lang=nl webgame by the Rijksmuseum in co-operation of IJsfontein;
4. e-Entertainment: Triangler; a serious mobile game by TNO
5. e-Culture: http://www.fabchannel.com/; a Music site;
6. e-Science: http://www.wadlandis.com/, a webgame by the Wadden association in co-operation with XMediaworks;
7. e-Business: http://www.skoeps.com/, a user generated news site;
8. e-Inclusion: www. ikzieikziewatjijnietziet.nl, a digital campaign against child abuse by Sire in co-operation with Achtung!

You probably wonder why a juror will spend a week of his/her life to look at entries from all over the world. For a juror it is a unique experience to see the trends in digital media in so many products. Besides the WSA uniquely demonstrates the local diversity and creative use of ICT around the world, serving as a global platform to make today's information society more inclusive. Of course also the experience of meeting 35 experts in multimedia and social activities is a chance of a lifetime. Seven of the jurors have been privileged three times and six jurors twice to be part of the Grand Jury of Eminent Experts. BTW I am not involved as a juror, but as a co-moderator.

BTW There is an official WSA blog on http://worldsummitaward.blogspot.com/
and there will be daily photographs.

Blog Posting Number: 855

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

Cultureplayer: Amsterdam online platform culture distribution

In Amsterdam the Cultureplayer project has been launched. In the project 11 Amsterdam cultural institutes collaborate in the distribution of cultural content. The process will be led by Fabchannel.

The Cultureplayer project combines 11 cultural players in the Amsterdam area: the public library, the Rijksmuseum, the documentary movie festival IDFA, the cultural centre de Meervaart and the youth studio West, The music theatre The Concertgebouw and the Concertgebouw Orchestra, the municipal theatre, the theatre Carré, the Van Gogh Museum, the Dutch Opera and the Music Theatre. They will share visual and audio content on the internet.

Fabchannel will transfer the experience that it has collected over the past years in the area of technology, rights and the development of business models, to the other participating institutes. They will be able to develop an internet strategy in order to make culture accessible for a broad international audience and position Amsterdam as a cultural capital in the world.

Using the experience of Fabchannel, the institutes will also be able to find new money sources by coupling content with advertisement or sponsor models.

Earlier this year Fabchannel launched the Fabplayer. This is an interactive video player, which facilitates the internet users to search the Fabchannel archive and play the concerts. Recently Fabchannel developed a browser which can be integrated in sites and blogs, so that internet users can start their own concert channel. Similarly, the visual and audio content can be distributed by the cultural institutions, starting up cultural content channels all over the world.

Fabchannel recently announced co-operation with Joost, the first online worldwide TV distribution platform. Fabchannel will get an own channel on this platform distributing concerts from amongst others the Stereophonics, Bloc Party, Madness and Cold War Kids.

Cultureplayer is technically facilitated by the glass fibre network Amsterdam and is one of the first cultural content projects. This type of cultural projects is in line with the creative city policy of the municipality of Amsterdam.

Blog Posting Number: 730

Tags: creative city