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 A workshop for the promotion of an ESCWA sponsored competition for Digital Arabic Content (DAC) took place last week in Berytech in the presence of potential candidates and different stakeholders interested in the topic, as well as ESCWA and Berytech teams involved in this action.
The workshop featured a welcome note from Mr. Maroun Chammas, President of Berytech. It was followed by a presentation on the Importance and Opportunities of the Digital Arabic Content by Dr. Nibal Idlebi, while Dr. Mirna Barbar elaborated on the competition’s scope and application modalities. Dr. Nicolas Rouhana presented the merits of incubating the project within Berytech’s development center.
The audience largely made up of young entrepreneurs or would be entrepreneurs, interacted dynamically with the presenters. The president of PCA, Mr. Gabriel Deek as well as reps of Cisco and the Partnership for Lebanon were also present in support of the DAC competition.
ESCWA will incubate DAC applications in Lebanon through Berytech as well as in various incubators in the pan-Arab world for regional projects. This competitive process will encourage university graduates and young entrepreneurs to research and submit proposals for a variety of DAC applications; and assist with and subsidize the incubation for a period of one year of those proposals that will be deemed most likely to succeed by an evaluation committee which will be assembled in each participating ESCWA member country. This committee will bring together DAC experts, university professors, representatives of national ICT incubators and ESCWA staff members. Submitted proposals may address a variety of subjects that are relevant to the socioeconomic development of the Arab region including: a) software for the development of DAC; b) utilizing the potential of open source software in the development of DAC applications; c) development of applications for e-government, e-learning, e-health, e-culture, media and science; and d) other innovative DAC development proposals.
For more information about the DAC competition, kindly contact Berytech.
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