ICTlogy

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It is widely recognised that ICTs have potential to contribute to meeting development goals such as basic health care, poverty reduction and education. It is often argued that countries harnessing the potential of ICTs can expect accelerating economic growth, improving human welfare and the fostering of good governance practices. The role of development goals in policy making is an important area of academic study and practical application. For instance, the millennium development goals (MDGs) developed by the OECD have been adopted by the governments of several countries as a focus on achievement of measures by 2015. ICT has also been a key element of various economic development and public sector reform agendas’ around the globe. The conference will explore the contribution of ICTs to the achievement of sustainable development.

We invite papers that describe, critique, develop arguments, and draw conclusions from the multitude of development projects on the role of ICTs in achieving development goals and addressing challenges to sustainability.

The event includes a Doctoral Colloquium to offer PhD students from the ICT for Development (ICT4D) community a unique opportunity to present and discuss their research with leading specialists, scholars and peers in an international setting.

The theme of the event is “Unlocking the Potential of Mobile Technology for Social Impact”.

The three-day event will convene key stakeholders interested in the use and application of mobile technology in support of social action. Participants will include NGO/nonprofit practitioners using mobile phones in innovative and creative ways; mobile technologists; researchers studying the use of mobile phones; government officials; donors, and representatives from the telecommunications industry.

eLearning Africa 2009 will build upon the outcomes from the past three conferences whose major goal has been to bring people together who are actively engaged in education and implementation of learning technologies in schools, universities, corporate training as well as in education in the public sector. These conferences are organised to develop eLearning capacities in Africa by bringing together people involved in all aspects of technology-enhanced education and training in Africa, including management and policymaking.

This workshop provides a forum for discussion of practical experience and research related to the diffusion and use and of information and communication technologies (ICT) in developing regions of the world. The workshop will provide a forum for presentation and discussion of actual development projects. We invite research papers, panel session proposals, and field studies that can inform theory and provide guidelines to field workers in developing economies.

eAsia 2008 is an open ICT for development cooperation platform for Asian countries for discussing opportunities and challenges for promoting growth of ICT for development in Asia through consultative dialoguing, strategic planning, knowledge networking and business partnering. The conference and exhibition organised by Centre for Science, Develpment and Media Studies (CSDMS) and co-host by Ministry of Water, Energy, and Communications (KTAK), Government of Malaysia.

eAsia 2008, through its five seminal conferences, will focus on five emerging application domains of ICTfor Development - e-Government, ICT in Education, ICT and Rural Development, ICTenabled Health services and Mobile application and services for development.

Tracks / parallel events:

• eGov Asia 2008
• Digital Learning Asia 2008
• eHealth Asia 2008
• Asian Telecentre Forum 2008
• mServe Asia 2008

This conference will bring together a fine mix of practitioners and academicians in the area of ICTs for sustainable development. There is a growing body of research that point to the critical role of information and communication technologies(ICT) in improving the socio-economic and political status of developing nations in general and sub-Saharan Africa(SSA) in particular.

This session aims at exploring the potential of Mobile Technologies to foster social and economic development. It is a small inter-disciplinary forum gathering web experts, mobile
experts, academics from developed and developing regions, NGOs and civil society
representatives with field experience and expertise to identify the key issues of exploiting
mobile phones and other mobile devices as an ICT-platform. Among the issues, the session
will particularly be focusing on:
- technical issues related to specific types of applications (m-health, mEducation, …)
- technical issues related to the mean of deployment (sms, voice, web,…)
- technical issues related to accessibility for illiterate people
- Social issues: how to capture the real needs from the targeted populations, how to have a
bottom-up approach that will integrate NGOs into international organization agenda and work
- Social issues related to empowerment: how to enable local people to master the technology to develop and deploy the applications they need, how to leverage local content and
applications development
- Social issues related to sustainability, entrepreneurship

This is a special session at the Mobile Life conferences and exhibitions:

• mSociety 2008, the 1st International Conference on Mobile Society
• Euro mGov 2008, the 3rd European Conference on Mobile Government

We welcome presentations within all “m” areas: m-government, m-health, m-banking, m-policy, … All are relevant to M4D. While the “m” in this context often implies low tech it is also noteworthy that wireless connections have promises for the development of broadband networks Special session on “Wireless Broadband Networks for developing regions”.

The Center for Human IT at Karlstad University has become a reference in the field of ICT4D, so this event should be a sure bet.

The Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning [...] will explore how open and distance learning can help achieve international development goals and education for all. The conference theme is “Access to Learning for Development” with a focus on children and young people, health, livelihoods, governance, conflict and social justice.

The Forum features the workshop Learning To Design Technology Enhanced Learning For Rural Livelihoods, which at the moment already has a wiki and an associated library of case studies (in progress).

Thanks for the tip, Josh.

ICT4D research symposium entering in its third edition this year, targeted to master-level and PhD students in the field, though other researchers in the field are usually welcome.

This is a cannot-miss event for anyone interested in what is the cutting edge research on subjects like the digital divide, e-readiness, e-learning for development, telecenters, technologies for access to ICTs in developing countries, delivery of e-services in developing countries, e-inclusion and e-empowerment, etc.