Despite my initial wariness of yet another big conference, this one turned out to be more than just the fluff I expected it to be. Organised by the Global Knowledge Partnership, which has international members wanting to develop ICT for Development (Poverty Reduction etc), it had 1000 plus people coming together for 4 days in an impressive set up at KL Convention Centre.
The sessions that excited me the most were those on how ICT has been used for socio-political spreading of news and knowledge. Steven Gan from Malaysiakini spoke on his experience, and others shared theirs as well.
It was disturbing, of course, that it was within this very week itself that there were multiple arrests, culminating finally in the ISA 5. Some participants commented that it was strangely ironic. Here we were talking about knowledge and open information sharing, when outside these arrests were taking place.
Let’s maximise ICT for Malaysia!
