The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) - a specialist agency of the United Nations for telecommunications - is promoting a video competition on ''The future of ICTs''
The competition is aimed at young people aged between 18 and 26, who should send videos outlining concrete, creative and bold ideas about the future of information and communication technologies (ICTs). These ideas may include suggestions, particularly on the development of ICTs in technical fields and in areas such as finance, international cooperation, security and political affairs.
Videos should be sent to the ITU by 20 March 2009 and must:
- Have a maximum duration of 3 minutes;
- Use only the ITU's official languages (English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian or Chinese);
- Respect intellectual property rights;
- Not contain information of an illegal or offensive nature;
- Respect the terms and conditions of YouTube (you must have a YouTube account to compete).
The winning videos will be selected by a panel of judges chosen by the ITU, and will receive a prize of travel and accommodation (for one person) to take part in the ITU's 4th World Telecommunication Policy Forum (WTPF), which is being held in the Lisbon Congress Centre ( Portugal) from 22 to 24 April 2009. The remaining accepted videos will also be published online and may be shown by the ITU at other international events.
The WTPF is a high level event of great importance to the ITU as an opportunity to debate strategy and policy issues of key importance to the development of the telecommunications sector. In particular, this event focuses on topics such as convergence, next generation networks, International Telecommunications Regulation and other Internet related matters of public policy.
On the day before the Forum (April 21), an event will be held, named Strategic Dialogue on ICTs: Confronting the Crisis, where there will be discussion of the impact that the financial crisis will have on the telecommunications sector.
