The 20th Int'l WWW Conference, Hyderabad and getting the next million humans connected to the web

Attended the 20th International World Wide Conference last week in Hyderabad. It was a unique and immersing experience for someone like me who never attended a research conference. When I got nominated, I was'nt really sure if I will stay interested for all the five days (except for the fact that I will get relishing food for all the five days). However as things unfolded each day, it got really interesting and here are some of things that I enjoyed, other than the great food at the Hotel Novotel / Hyderabad International Convention Center (HICC)

First !! About Hyderabad International Convention Center -HICC . I was amazed to see such a huge and plush facility built for conferences in India. This probably is the first of its kind, something that was missing for long time to be able to host an event of large size in India.

On Third day of the conference, it was India battling with Pakistan and interestingly, everyone watched it live on the huge screen in the auditorium. Most foreigners must have been amazed by the excitement and spirit that Indians showed towards the game..

 



Web for the next 1 Billion users - This was one of the hottest topic which was deliberated on each day in at least one of the sessions - it was all about connecting to the next billion users to the web. Some stats that I got to know ( and remember) as a result... There are more than 6 Billion humans on the earth (just found on wikipedia that is it 6.91 Billion, to which we in India contribute a lot). OF which more than 2 Billion are connected to the Internet/WWW. India contributes 1.21 billion people with 70% of them living in rural areas (600,000 villages) which translates to a potential of 800 million people living in villages and who most likely do not have access to internet. Most of them however have access to the mobile phones and hence Mobiles could be the (rather is the) mediaum to get these 800 million roped onto Internet / WWW.

The sessions that I found to be interesting in this context were

1. Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam's Keynote - scattered thoughts but all thoroughly thought provoking - makes one think hard. Most importantly, he proudly declared that his presentation is available on his website and it is indeed accessible out here. I still remember he announced the same (availability of his presentation on web) when he gave the speech at the IBM Townhall meet 4 years ago.

2. Tim Berner's Lee's Keynote - again scattered but very wise and thought provoking.. he talked about the twitter revolution in Egypt and "Right to Access Internet" and a basic human right that legislation of nations worldwide, should make provisions for... or at least start thinking about.




3. Agrocom - For Authoritative and Accurate Agricultural Information - a project founded in 2006 at IIT Bombay's Society for Innovation & Entrepreneurship Business Incubator.

 Message is there is a lot of effort needed to get more non-english (indian language) content on the web and provide the means for common people to contribute through standard input devices and VOICE too...



4. Microsoft Research Project Wikibhasha - which has the goal of helping translate Wikipedia articles to Indian languages.. more the content in vernacular language, more people are likely to get glued on the net.

5. India Development Gateway Project for Department of IT and executed by CDAC. The objective of this project was to get web to serve the common folk. Bring information and various services at the doorsteps in the villages.

 

6. Spoken Web - The IBM Innovation - an attempt to get the next billion people having low end mobile handsets to connect and collaborate to offer and avail of services over phone(voicesites). Hatts-off to Arun Kumar from IBM for this lateral thinking and working on this project at IBM Research. This will make WWW on Internet obsolete for the next million, who probably do not need facebook, google and yahoo to take the advantage of the wisdom of crowds.

7. Mapunity - I still do not understand this company- I mean, their business model. They are doing amazing things for mankind using internet and technology- the best amongst the many things they do is help with traffic congestion in cities (Bangalore at the moment). The guy Ashwin Mahesh talked about some of the unbelievable things they have been doing in collaboration with the Traffic police and Public transport guys in Bangalore.. After what I listened in to and read on internet, I consider them to be an NGO that a for-profit organization - if they pay as well as industry does, I would love to work for them... :-)

8. Web Of Things - I get enthralled when think of a day when all important, expensive, traceable devices get hooked on to net and start interacting amongst themselves and / or with humans. for example, a packet to be shipped on a conveyor belt talked to the conveyor belt and the wagon in which it is placed. SensorLab was the company which talked about all the innovations happening in this space.

I attended several research papers too, and they were quite enlightening.. however as after thinking through, I think I enjoyed the industry tracks more..naturally, couldrelate to them directly..I am glad I attended the most.