Monday, September 03, 2007

2007 WSA Grand Jury Croatia (5)

Georgious. I got up early this morning and walked to a beach (see photograph) to take a swim. The island of Brijuni has a few wide beaches and some very cozy one, just enough space for a couple in love. This island is like paradise. Not just for the (pebble) beaches, but also for nature. It is really envigorating to take a swim. I found some early members of the WSA Polar Bear Club swimming and sunbathing in the early sun.

Last night we had a networking dinner and session. The basic idea was that jurors exchange ideas for projects, in which fellow jurors can participate.. So far it generated thGorgeous. I got up early this morning and walked to a beach to take a swim. The island of Brijuni has a few wide beaches and some very cosy one, just enough space for a couple in love. This island is like paradise. Not just for the (pebble) beaches, but also for nature. It is really invigorating to take a swim. I found some early members of the WSA Polar Bear Club swimming and sunbathing in the early sun.

Last night we had a networking dinner and session. The basic idea was that jurors exchange ideas for projects, in which fellow jurors can participate. So far it generated three ideas. Of course one of the ideas is the third version of e-Content: Voices from the Ground. The idea for this book originated with Osama Manzar from India at the Grand Jury session in Dubai and was executed before the UN World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva (Switzerland). Interested jurors wrote an assessment on e-content in their country. The first version contained 33 countries. The same exercise was done before the second UN Summit in Tunisia. The second idea was for an e-content study by Alex Felsenberg. I put in a project about e-books/digital papers. Some more ideas started to float around. In the coming days we will be able to expound on it.

Today the Eminent Experts start the second round of evaluation. The first cut has been made and now 15 to 18 entries per category are left. A new fresh team will study them, evaluate them and make another refinement. This should bring the number down to maximally 9 entries per category. Out of these the last five entries, to be called winners, will be selected. The WSA has five winners per category and is not following the Olympic spirit with one winner and runner ups. The WSA does consider it more important to have showcases of best practice rather than one winner taking all the honour.

It will not be a relaxing time for the jurors today. Despite the fact that they have a whole day and evening for familiarising themselves with the entries selected for the second round, they will have to dive deep into the backgrounds of the entries and the issues of the category. They will have to discover what are the trends in e-Government, e-Learning, e-Culture, e-Health, e-Science, e-Business, e-Inclusion and e-Entertainment; of course e-Entertainment is a category, which is looking for more than shoot-them-up games. But the jurors will still take coffee and tea in the garden.

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

Blog Posting Number: 857

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