IST2006 recognises best communicators and practices in IST
The winners of the best information society technologies (IST) website and exhibit were announced at the closing plenary of the IST2006 conference in Helsinki on 23 November. The event also hosted the Finnish Prime Minister's Awards for best information society practices. Organised by the European Commission, and sponsored by Nokia, the IST awards aim to encourage projects to better communicate their research work. Presenting the awards, Fabio Colasanti Director General of the Information Society and Media DG, said that exhibitions and using the web were the most effective ways for projects to spread the word about their results. 'Communicating is incredibly important because what's the point of producing results if no-one hears about them?' he asked. Picking up the €10,000 prize money for best website was the Humaine project, a Network of Excellence which has built up an online community of over 150 researchers working in the field of emotion-oriented computing. The project was among some 250 participating websites, which the research community rated via the IST2006 website. A shortlist was drawn up by a jury, which then selected the winner. They singled out the Humaine website for its easy navigation, user-friendly content, and for adhering closely to the W3C guidelines for accessibility. Speaking to CORDIS News, Marc Schroeder, a senior researcher at the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and a Humaine project partner, said that winning the award was a great recognition for the all the hard work that had gone into building the community. The money, he said, would also come in very useful, since it would allow the project partners to continue to develop the website even after the EU funds had run out. 'This way we will be able to sustain this established community,' he said. Meanwhile, the 4,500 participants at this year's event were put to work and asked to vote for their favourite exhibit, along with a jury of independent experts with experience in event communications. They chose the stand of the Tai Chi project, which displayed acoustic interface technology, meaning it can convert virtually any physical object, flat or curved, such as tables, walls, and windows, into giant two or three dimensional touch pads. Tai-Chi's project coordinator, Ming Yang of Cardiff University in Wales, who picked up the €10,000 prize money on behalf of the project, said he believed that there were no limits in the number of applications of this technology. The only limitation, he said, was our own imagination. The event also hosted Finland's awards for best information society practices. In the 'new innovations category', the prize went to the 'Consumer Gadget', a device which allows shoppers to check the ethical background of any consumer item by simply scanning the barcode of the item using a mobile phone. Similarly innovative was the winner in the 'effectiveness and productivity category' - a pre-completed income tax return form. The form enables taxpayers to leave filling in their returns to the tax office, and then simply check the form for errors. According to the Finnish Board of Taxes, which designed the form, more than half of taxpayers received a completely correct pre-completed return form. Finally, the prize in the 'application and promotion of data security' category was presented to the VTT Finland for its small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) risk management toolkit. Available on CD, the toolkit offers businesses solutions for risk management which have been adapted to their environment. The designers of the product say that it has generated real interest elsewhere in Europe, and has already been translated into Swedish, Dutch, English and German. All three winners received prize money of €10,000, while a special award of €5,000 went to the A-Clinic Foundation for its AddictionLink web service, which offers peer support and therapy to people with addiction problems, as well as help and advice to family and friends. Presenting the awards, Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said that the intention of the awards was to facilitate the advance of new information and society practices and increase awareness of the practices both nationally and internationally. He suggested that a similar kind of exchange and utilisation of best practices would be useful at a European level too.
Countries
Finland