Almost 700 participants during two days conference, 57 speakers from six countries, the PLN 40,000 award for Katarynka Foundation. Moreover, 400 people watching the conference online, 26,000 people monitoring posts on Facebook and #MoreDigital ranked first among the most popular hashtags in Poland. That is the initial summing up of “Sector 3.0” – two-day conference on the application of the Internet and new technologies by NGOs, that took place in the Copernicus Science Center on May 27-28.
The event (held in the Copernicus Science Center on the first day and in the seats of institutions, organizations and companies supporting the conference on the second day), organized by the Polish-American Freedom Foundation and the Information Society Development Foundation, was attended by almost 500 people from all over Poland – members of non-governmental organizations from almost 100 cities, towns and villages as well as representatives of business, public administration and academics.
Also, during the conference the “Sector 3.0” ICT for Local Development award of PLN 40,000 was presented to “Katarynka” Foundation of Wrocław. The Foundation has created the first in Poland (and probably in the world) portal named Adapter, which is based on modern technologies and makes films available to people with impaired vision and hearing. ‘The Adapter Internet portal is a free, accessible to everyone film repository. Each material is adjusted to the needs of people with impaired vision and hearing. That is a novelty in Poland. Thanks to the autodescription blind people can watch the films and have quite new perception of them, thus understand them better. They can also have full access to culture,’ Mariusz Trzeciakiewicz, a co-founder of the Foundation explains.
During the inaugural session of the conference, Michał Boni, a member of the European Parliament presented the idea behind the leading motif of the conference, that is #MoreDigital, and described what it really means to be a human being in the digital era. ‘Thanks to conferences like this one we can better understand what happens during the digital revolution. It changes everything around us, we are connected with everybody around us all the time. The essence of the changing world is the possibility to process various data based on which quite new services are created. #MoreDigital means more digicity. But more digicity controlled by a man,’ he said.
Maria Wasiak, Minister of Infrastructure and Development and Roman Dmowski, Vice Minister of Administration and Digitalization spoke about the idea of Digital Poland, its implementation and technological progress in our country. ‘The difficulty with progress does not consist in the lack of funds – the problem is how to use these funds for good, useful projects. Digital Poland is the only program in EU which integrates all digital projects which are supported by European Funds,’ Minister Wasiak said.
The “Sector 3.0” conference was attended by international authorities. In his lecture on “A man, technology, development?” Professor Junseok Hwang of Seoul University presented his idea of relationship between the development of societies and technological development. Ivan Owen, representing the e-NABLE Community Foundation, spoke about the possibilities to use new technologies in social service, such as the use of 3D printers to create and produce cheap artificial limbs. ‘You can make a new project in your garage and it will become a global initiative,’ he said.
On the first day, there were 18 seminars at the same time. Among the leading subjects were such as: ‘Three social media which will dominate on Polish market’, ‘Gamification with the use of mobile devices’, “Drones, videorecorders, wearables – a fashion or reality’, ‘Big Data versus contents selection in the organization’ or ‘ Fundraising on the Internet on the example of Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity’. There were also presentations of new technologies.
The main partner in the this-year “Sector 3.0” conference was Intel, while technical support was delivered by Orange and Microsoft. The conference was held under the patronage of the Ministry of Administration and Digitalization. The honorary patron was Maria Wasiak, Minister of Infrastructure and Development. The event conforms to the objectives of the Broad Agreement for the Development of Digital Skills in Poland. The conference was also supported by the Copernicus Science Center.
“Sector 3.0” is a part of “ICT for Local Development” program, an initiative by the Polish-American Freedom Foundation managed by the Information Society Development Foundation. The objective of the program is popularization of the information and communication technologies use by NGOs, especially at a local level.
More about the conference at:
www.facebook.com/konferencja.sektor3.0
Additional information can be obtained from:
Dawid Szarański, tel. +48 530 69 11 99
Małgorzata Dąbrowska, tel. +48 722 002 316
