Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth

ICT Summit, Day 2: Airline Tickets, Awards and Breakouts

On the final morning of the conference, I’d started the day by reconsidering when I’d go home to Boston. There was so much going on this week I still hadn’t had the opportunity to meet one-on-one with several people I was eager to talk with about our “e-government for all” work. I called the airline office to see if switching my ticket by one day was feasible; they told me it could be arranged for a modest penalty, but I’d have to come to downtown before 11am that day, since the airline office was only open for three hours on Saturday. Conference events would start at 10am, and I was just about to meet with Minister Khan from Bangladesh for breakfast, so I decided to drop the idea.

Breakfast with Minister Khan was very enjoyable; along with a variety of work-related things we talked about my problems getting my ticket changed over the phone. He suggested I stay for the extra day, even if it meant being a little late for the morning sessions; how often would I have the chance to meet with all the people who’d gathered here from all over the world? Inspired by his words of wisdom, I darted back up to my room, grabbed my ticket and hailed a taxi to go to the airline office in Causeway Bay. The ticket change should have taken only 10 minutes, but I ended up spending nearly 45 minutes there as the staff struggled to figure out how to reload the ticket-printing machine with paper.

By the time I’d taken a taxi the 20-minute drive back to Cyberport, I was running about 40 minutes late. No one seemed to notice, though, as everyone was watching an award ceremony for Hong Kong’s Web Care competition. The contest honored local websites that were accessible to the disabled, as well as accessible sites designed by local students. The organizers even brought in a well-known Hong Kong movie heartthrob to give out some of the awards. If it hadn’t been for the posse of paparazzi following him around, I would have just assumed he was just one of the older students, just woefully underdressed in a muscle shirt.

Silvia Amici speaks during the afternoon breakout sessions

Following another buffet lunch, we split up into breakout sessions for the afternoon. I discovered that Louise was having further problems with the CD-Rom she wanted to present in the E-Learning session, so I offered to fill in for her, talking about the US E-Rate program instead. Since I was scheduled to speak during that same timeslot for the e-government breakout, Louise and I arranged with the session moderators so I could speak first in the E-Gov session, the bolt over to the e-learning session. My e-government presentation went well, though it was a rather small audience; I ended up having a much bigger crowd in the e-learning session. In the end, though, Louise decided to speak briefly about the state of education technology policy in Australia, using my presentation as a contrast. While I talked about US successes in wiring schools but failing to train teachers adequately and create quality content, Louise noted how online educational content was rich in Australia, while infrastructure still needed a lot of work.

In the second batch of breakout sessions, I attended the panel on e-culture and e-inclusion, which Suzanne Stein moderated. The session was a fascinating mix of presentations. Silvia Amici spoke of her organization’s work to promote Web accessibility and universal design in Italy. Louise gave her second presentation, this time focusing on projects targeting underserved Australian populations. A representative from Hong Kong’s public broadcaster discussed the network’s online strategy, while Eglal Bahgat, deputy director of Egypt’s Cultnat Center, discussed the rich amount of content being produced about her country’s long history.... -ac

Posted by acarvin at May 17, 2004 06:02 PM | TrackBack