Rome, Italy
September 24, 2007
An international conference on how
to help rural communities harness the new Web technology for
rural development and natural resource management opens tomorrow
at FAO headquarters in Rome.
The Web2forDev 2007 is
the first international conference to discuss how new Internet
tools commonly known as Web 2.0 can be used to the advantage of
Southern actors to more efficiently network, collaborate and
exchange information.
From 25 to 27 September 2007, the conference will cover the
latest evolution of the Web, offering free or very low-cost
interactive Web tools to create, publish and share information.
It will address three main topics: the use and impact of shared
virtual spaces for remote collaboration and knowledge sharing;
the use of appropriate technologies for online publishing; and
online information retrieval and access.
Topics to be covered during working sessions vary from
village-to-village knowledge sharing in Egypt and using Web 2.0
tools in a low bandwidth environment in Sub-Saharan countries to
overcoming cultural, linguistic and geographic barriers in the
Amazon.
Key-note speakers
One of the key-note speakers of the conference is Ethan
Zuckerman. Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society
from the Harvard Law of School, Zuckerman is co-founder of
Global Voices, the
largest aggregator of developing world blogs and citizen media.
He has been involved with the development of web tools and
specifically technology for the developing world since 1994,
when he helped co-found Tripod.com.
Other key-note speakers are Anriette Estherhuysen, founder of
WomenNet in South Africa and CIRAD expert Thierry Helmer. CIRAD
is a French agricultural research centre working for
international development.
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