The Information Source for Multimedia Associations

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VERSION FRANÇAISE : CLIQUEZ ICI

Quote of the month

"The fact that a computer is capable of beating a human being in a chess game does not mean that the computer is smarter. It just means that a computer can surpass a human being in tasks that are mechanical and predetermined. That same computer is still incapable of writing Plato's dialogue". (Giorgio Israel, historian and mathematician, Rome University)

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IN THIS ISSUE
FIAM news
Associations news
Multimedia News
Interview: Moez Souabni

Shanghai Multimedia Delegation Visits Montreal and FIAM Offices
FIAM met June 13th a 12 member-strong delegation representing the Shanghai Multimedia Industry Association (SMIA), the Municipality of Shanghai and various local multimedia company chiefs. The discussions focused on both parties' professional activities and on the potential for business relationships. China is currently witnessing an unprecedented growth in the fields of Internet and multimedia and is positioning itself as an important centre for foreign companies interested in outsourcing software development and production. The municipality of Shanghai is building, in cooperation with other local partners, several technology and innovation parks, the first one to be inaugurated later this year. These parks will consist of multimedia production centres and R&D labs in such fields as digital cinema, gaming, virtual reality, e-learning and other multimedia content applications. The delegation was keen in the parks' potential to act as levers to the local multimedia industry and to attract international IT and multimedia companies interested in taking advantage of the growing Chinese digital content market.

ISOC Francophonie 2002
French-speaking chapters of the Internet Society met in Montreal, June 12-14, and FIAM staff and ISOC-Quebec member, Nasser Boumenna, attended this lively and nicely organized event. The purpose of the meeting was for these linguistically-defined ISOC chapters to come up with a set of proposals and projects to be presented at INET 2002 (June 18-21) in Washington D.C. Four issues of interest to these chapters were identified and discussed in workshop formats: Internet Governance and adequate chapter representation at ISOC, cooperation among linguistically-based ISOC chapters, the promotion of French-speaking digital content and the development of technologies fostering the use of the French language on the Web. Based on the results of the discussions, a set of proposals were voted on the last day of the event and we invite you to refer to
www.isoc-francophonie.org for a clear description of these outcomes.

FIAM Strategic Plan 2003-2005
FIAM's first instalment, a discussion paper and a questionnaire, regarding its Strategic Plan is in the mail and Internet and multimedia associations should receive it in the next two weeks. We are also sending an email version of that instalment and you should find a copy of it in your inbox by the first week of July. This exercise serves the purpose of ensuring that the Federation readies for the challenges ahead and elaborate objective and forward-looking strategies to tackle them. The multimedia industry is growing rapidly in several parts of the world, with software development and services strongly in the lead. FIAM wants to understand the needs of this dynamic industry and invite all Internet and multimedia associations to participate in this thought-provoking exercise. Nasser Boumenna, Director of Content and Strategic Development is in charge of the process and will be in touch with you to seek your participation. You can also find the discussion paper and the questionnaire on www.fiam.org.


MONTREUX 2002
Circle those dates because there are only three months left before FIAM 3rd international Summit of Internet and Multimedia (Montreux, Switzerland, October
8-11, 2002). The Summit is entitled Bridging the Digital Divide : the Multimedia Industry Speaks Out, and already a wide array of national and international multimedia-related associations and organizations will be present to network, exchange and participate in several original industry projects to fighting the Divide.
The Summit will focus on three major themes the details of which can be found on our website www.fiam.org:

1) Bridging the Divide, Pushing for Inclusion
2) Technology and Knowledge Transfer
3) Fostering creativity and Internet and Multimedia

Dozens of multimedia associations from around the world among whom AADM (Argentina), NASSCOM (India), EMF (Europe), CAPROSOFT (Costa Rica), APEBI (Morocco), @TIM (Tunisia), DMMV (Germany), Alliance Numériqc (Quebec), OSIRIS (Senegal), etc. are expected in Montreux where they will take part in five specifically tailored industry-setting workshops. Details regarding participation at these unique workshops will be sent to you in the next few weeks:

· digital content localization and the promotion of cultural diversity,
· technology and knowledge transfer mechanisms,
· skills development in multimedia employment,
· digital content and intellectual property,
· e-learning and multimedia

The Summit has been chosen by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) as a pre-conference to the one it is organizing on behalf of the United Nations on the Information Society (Geneva, December 2003).

Confirmed keynote speakers include:

- Debra DUNN (Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, Hewlett-Packard)
- Dennis GILHOOLY (Special Advisor to Mark Mallock Brown, Administrator at United Nations Development Program)
- Bruno LANVIN (Executive Secretary of DOT Force, INFODEVEV Manager, The World Bank)
- Sam PITRODA (CEO, WorldTel., UK)
- Sibisuso SIBISI (CEO, CSIR South Africa)
- Robert STONE (Scientific Director, Virtual Muse, UK)
- Yoshio UTSUMI (Secretary General, International Telecommunication Union)

For more information on the Summit, you can check the program www.fiam.org or www.internetworldsummit.org.

ASSOCIATIONS NEWS - BY COUNTRY

Canada
The Information Technology Association of Canada, (ITAC) has released an important study on the labour market for IT workers in the province of Ontario. The study argues that, even though there is currently a relative abundance of skilled IT workers, as the economy improves, that situation is bound to change with offer outpacing supply. The study considers that 38,000 IT jobs will be added in 2002, potentially creating a gap of approximately 9,900 unfilled positions. The study looked at the hiring intentions of Ontario-based employers of IT workers across the whole economy including finance, manufacturing and the resource sector as well as information technology. Measurable negative consequences on Ontario businesses include project delays, customer dissatisfaction, and lost sales opportunities. This study, the most comprehensive look at the IT job market in several years, was funded by Human Resources Development Canada and the Ontario Regional Office.

Northern Ireland
In the same field, the Northern Ireland Interactive Multimedia Association (NiiMA) has issued an important report providing an analysis of the demand for and supply of new media skills in the Northern Ireland economy. Research upon which this report is based was conducted by Dream Ireland Ltd between December 2000 and March 2001. The new media or multimedia sector in Northern Ireland has been growing rapidly in recent years to become a key sector in the creative industries, new media technologies and products. For more information please see http://www.niima.org.uk/pages/nmni

Germany
DMMV, the German Multimedia Association, issued early this month several proposals for the purpose of strengthening the digital economy in these difficult times: 1) accrued measures for protecting digital goods; 2) simplification and
cost-reduction of copyright protection means and regulations; 3) acceptance of digital goods as credit-worthy; 4) increased flexibility and resources for education and skills development and training; 5) setting up Investment agencies for multimedia start-up funding; 6) and finally the establishment of an e-government procurement portal.

France
Franche-Comté Interactive, the multimedia association situated close to the Swiss borders, announced last month the expansion of MJC Centre-Image of Montbéliard, a public cyber-centre fully dedicated to the discovery of everything Internet and Multimedia. Thanks to a 300,000 Euros investment form the local government, the centre is now equipped with high-speed Internet, new computers, digital equipment for video capture and editing as well as DVD productions. The centre will be offering to the general public training classes on various applications related to the Internet including such domains as Astronomy…

Costa Rica
The Costa Rican Chamber of Commerce for Software Producers, CaproSoft, has recently announced the coming on board, as of June 1st, of its new Executive Director, Edgard Murillo Salas. Mr. Murillo comes from the business sector with specialization in finance and business administration. Before joining CaproSoft, he has been in charge of Information Systems implementation for various pension funds as well as working closely with the country's stock market exchange. To welcome him, you can send an email at emurillo@caprosoft.org or communicate with him at (283-5624 or 283-5604).

How Many Internet Users are there in the World?
According to a recent eMarketer survey, 446 million people worldwide were using the Web in one form or another by the end of 2001. Close to a third (134 million) of those users originate from North America, approximately a third (140 million) from Europe and a final third (146 million) from the Asia/Pacific region. Only 22 million (4%) people are connected in South America and a paltry five million Africans can surf the Net (1,2%). Anticipating future Internet growth, eMarketer analysts argue for an absolute increase to 530 million users for the current year and 623 million users for 2003, still less than 10% of the world population at best. www.emarketer.com

Things are not getting any better on the Digital Divide Front
According to U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, "The digital divide still yawns as widely as ever, with billions of people still unconnected to a global society which, on its side, is more and more wired." This quote taken from a very recent U.N. organized conference speech confirms that despite many efforts and initiatives these past years to come up with realistic solutions, the divide is here to stay. Governments and private corporations such as HP, Microsoft or Bertelsmann, along with multilateral organizations and numerous NGOs, have indeed banded together to set up programs to funnel financial and human resources toward bridging the divide (U.N. ICT Task Force, G8 DOT Force, World Bank InfoDev Program, the WEF Digital Divide Task Force, etc.) but the results are hard to see. HP and Microsoft have decided recently to up the ante and give 20% of the their charity budgets to the United Nations program promoting Internet and phone development in poor countries. Unfortunately, these initiatives appear like band-aid solutions considering the monumental needs confronted by people in the developing world. The divide however does not exist only in the telecommunications side of information technology but on the digital content side of it as well and that is why we are gathering in Montreux to see how the multimedia industry can provide answers to this issue (October 8-11).
Source: www.theworkcircuit.com/news/OEG20020621S0035
3D and Farming
Members of a 3D online research lab associated with the International Potato Center (CIP in Spanish) are collaborating with www.ActiveWorlds.com to develop online 3-D environments and create the world's first virtual crop fields. An internet connection and the free ActiveWorlds Internet browser, is all that is needed by researchers to meet together within a shared 3-D environment online such as a potato farm in the Andes or a mango grove in Burma. Dr. Roberto Quiroz, CIP's head of natural resource management in Lima, Peru, argues that the technology allows for the display of 3D useful virtual environmental scenarios : "We can model a farm, for instance, and then you're seeing that farm. Then we can apply an erosion model and show how rainfall will impact the farm in 20 or 25 years." This lab along with ten other ones are funded in most part by Future Harvest Group. Other participants in the program include the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization; several international agricultural research centers and universities in Europe, the U.S. and developing countries.
(Source: Glen McDonald, www.technologyReview.com, April 2, 2002)


Music Piracy is Hitting the Roof worldwide
And 2001 has not been easy for the music industry. Sales of pirated music grew by nearly 50% (1,9 billion duplicated units), according to the International Federation of Phonographic industry (IFPI) which accuses the CD-R format for this state of affairs. Well not really the format but certainly its use of it. IFPI considers those behind music piracy as a well organized network capable of taking advantage of various countries' lax copyright protection and enforcement capabilities. IFPI Chairman, Jay Berman, states that ``piracy on a global basis is for the most part a highly organized activity. It takes a high level of sophistication to produce a disc at a plant in Malaysia and to find that disc in Brazil.'' Can the solution to this issue come from technology itself (unique CD-R tracking code for example) or from the national authorities' new take on fighting piracy is still a matter of debate. For the time being, the music industry does not want to shoot the messenger by focusing mostly on the CD-R but wants to do more to make life difficult to those involved in duplicating digital content. (Source: Reuters, June 11, 2002)
Software Quality, an Oxymoron?
The issue of ensuring software quality and security is finally entering the public debate and various public and private sector organizations are taking the bull by the horns to address it. One of them, Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Mellon University, announced in May 2002 the creation of the Sustainable Computing Consortium, an organization whose purpose is to establish specifications and standards for software quality as well as facilitate the recognition process between sellers and buyers of what is good or bad software. The Consortium backers consist of major corporate IT and software developers and users among whom Microsoft, Oracle, NASA and Raytheon. Another notable characteristic of the Consortium consist of the people who will take part of this initiative since software engineers, public policy experts, economists and lawyers have been invited to join its ranks. Ultimately, the Consortium wants to provide solutions to a wide array of software applications be they around the desktop publishing environment or in database management. Another computer programming flaw the Consortium wants to tackle is buffer overflow.
(Source: Neil Irwin, Washington Post, May 17, 2002 and www.sustainablecomputing.org)

Korea/Japan FIFA World Cup 2002
They call it the World Cup of surprises but not to certain English computers which managed to choose Senegal over France in the Cup opening game when everybody else thought that the game would be a walk in the park for the 'bleus'. Kendra Mayfield reports in Wired that Henry Stott, a mathematician at the University of Warwick, developed the Glover Automated Results Indicator (GARI), a statistical model designed to predict the odds of every individual match in the 2002 World Cup. Stott's model rates teams on two dimensions: "strength," which quantifies how teams measure up against each other, and "patchiness," which charts a team's unpredictability. It is especially the patchiness dimension that did France in, including the absence of their star player, Zinedine Zidane and having to deal with a funny streak of bad luck (6 transversal bars) during first-round games. Unfortunately for GARI, it chose Argentina as the probable World Cup finalist and winner. We know of course where they are as we write these lines. (Source: Wired, June 8, 2002)

The Interview

This month interviewee is Moez Souabni, President of the Tunisian Association of Internet and Multimedia (@TIM).

How would you define your Association?
@TIM is an association of New Media professionals and amateurs who work for the promotion of Internet and multimedia in Tunisia.

What best describes, in general terms, the multimedia domains of activity in which your members are active?
Our association members operate in various multimedia fields of activity especially in the development and production of multimedia products and services. They are usually heads of small and medium companies, IT and Web professionals, students, New Media journalists, etc.

What are, at the national level, the Multimedia areas of activity your Association has identified and is currently working on?
— Initiating the Tunisian associative world to all things Internet and multimedia : organisation of training sessions and other teaching programs.
— Bringing Internet and multimedia to poor neighbourhoods: creation of four free Internet centres in the city of Tunis. Other centres are being completed in the cities of Sfax and Sousse.
— Cooperation with the regional cultural councils for the purpose of initiating the large public, youth especially, of the importance of Internet and multimedia.
— Organization of meetings and events for the public (Internet Festival) and professionals as well (International forum on multimedia, digital archiving and document storage and preservation, electronic signature).

If your Association is currently developing business relationships with other associations abroad, can you specify the reasons and the strategies?
We are interested in establishing with foreign multimedia associations an exchange of experiences and in setting up partnership programs that are of benefit to the members of both parties. Strategically speaking, we seek to identify fields of activity prone for partnerships, define common projects and programs, share responsibilities and act according to our own resources.

Does your government play an important role in developing the multimedia industry in your country?
The Tunisian government is striving to develop a strong and competitive multimedia industry. However, bureaucracy and administrative red tape are slowing somewhat the progress of this promising industry. Overall though, we are fairly satisfied of our achievements so far and know that we can do better.

How is your Association responding to the rapidly changing digital environment?
Thanks to our professional members, @TIM is following the rapid evolution of the digital world and we are quite conscious of the need to always be on the lookout and remain informed of the latest technological.

This Newsletter © 2001-2002 FIAM
(Fédération Internationale des Associations de Multimédia)
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