ARAB WORLD: Top e-Contents from region honoured

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The public celebration of the Arab e-Content Award Winners took place in Bahrain on Tuesday, May 17th. The Arab eContent Award is a regional spin-off of the World Summit Award (WSA). It recognizes the outstanding achievements of content producers, application developers and new media providers in the Arab world.

Highest level of Human Achievement

Prof. Peter A. Bruck, Chairman of the WSA stated: "The Winners of the Arab e-Content Award 2011 are truly the best in e-Content and Creativity from the WSA 2011 entries from the Arab world. They do proud to a region where language and culture have developed to the highest level of human achievement."

He also underlined that, being aware of the important interrelations between local content and international exchange, he is glad to see that a lot of this year’s winners of the Arab e-Content Award provide their content in Arabic as well as other languages such as English, French and more. "This way the Arab e-Content Award and its winning products take on an ambassadorial function beyond the mere preservation of Arabic cultural traditions and help to spread messages from this region to the world. The World Summit Award serves to make strong the winners and their companies successful."

These are the Arab e-Content Award Winners 2011 by category:

eGovernment & Institutions

• Abu Dhabi Spatial Data Infrastructure
• Hukoomi
• Tunisian Industry Portal

eCulture & Heritage

• National History
• Mosaic Bahrain
• Kuwait Words (Hachee)

eHealth & Environment

• Mymd
• Ministry of Health Portal
• Sokkary Dot Com

eLearning & Education

• Rufoof
• Educational Gate
• Taalam.tv

eBusiness & Commerce

• Monaqasat
• eZajil and Smart Hosted UC
• Bahrain Islamic Bank

eEntertainment & Games

• Sarab.co
• El3ab
• Kuwait Events (Hayyak)

eInclusion & Participation

• Real Show
• Nawaat Portal
• Erada

eScience & Technology

• Kangoulia
• Bahrain Locator
• Nanoscopy Science Center

How the winners were decided on

The Jury Committee in charge of the Arab e-Content Award included experts in the domain of eContent from different countries in the world. They came together in April in Hong Kong during the WSA Grand Jury.  The Arab e-Content Award Jury was moderated by Mr. Jak Boumans from the Netherlands. The members included:  Mrs. Anya Sverdlov from the Russian Federation, Mr. Suleman Bakhsh from the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Nawaf Abdulrahman from the Kingdom of Bahrain, Mr. Alexander Felsenberg from Germany, Mr. Nibal Idlebi from Syria, Mrs. Effat elShooky from Egypt, Mr. Faouzi Zaghbib from Tunisia and Mrs. Manar Alhashash from Kuwait.

Notably the jury members do not vote for their country’s projects in order to preserve a fair and a transparent selection.

Patronage by Deputy Prime Minister

The awards were held under the patronage of His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Mubarak Al Khalifa, Deputy Prime Minister, Chairman of the Supreme Committee for Information and Communication Technology during the Bahrain International eGovernment Forum from the 16th to the 18th of May 2011. The Award ceremony was held  at the Awal Ballroom of the Gulf Hotel in Manama.