e-Asia 2009 kicks off today

2-Dec-2009

The much awaited e-Asia 2009, the fourth in the series of the premier ICT event in Asia will be declared open by President Mahinda Rajapaksa at BMICH Colombo this morning (Dec. 02). Themed “Opportunities for Digital Asia”, the three-day greatest Information and Communication Technology event of the region for the year consisting of conference and exhibition will end on Friday (Dec. 04).

While the conference will include 40 thematic seminal sessions it will be graced by global visionaries, innovators, practitioners, policy makers and representatives from donor agencies. About 25 countries particularly from Asia but including USA and Europe will be represented at top level at the event.

Approximately 100 institutions and more than 1000 delegates are scheduled to participate in the conference while about 30,000 persons with a daily average of 10,000 are expected to visit the ICT-centred exhibition for which admission is free.

Speaking on the importance of the event Reshan Dewapura the Chief Operating Officer of the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) which is the Sri Lankan organisation hosting e-Asia 2009 said: “e-Asia 2009 will be a great opportunity for interacting particularly with the countries of the region. Indeed a great memorable experience of a life time is in store for the local and international participants at e-Asia 2009 both at conference and exhibition.”

About 408 presentations involved with the core aim of making the benefits of ICT reach the people, are on the cards. These will be under five thematic sectors, namely, (1) Emerging Technologies, (2) e-Government, (3) Digital Learning, (4) e-Health, and (5) Telecentre Forum. The number of presentations under these categories are respectively 120, 75, 115, 68 and 30. “The wide spectrum of the countries represented at the event including India, Sri Lanka , Sweden, Philippines, Japan, Israel, Nepal, Cambodia, China, Bangladesh, Uganda, USA, USA, Malaysia, Albania, Australia, Japan, Morocco, France, Switzerland, Argentina, Egypt, United Kingdom and Kenya indicates the international hue of e-Asia 2009”, ICTA COO concluded.