Digital agenda topics were discussed during 31st National Informatics Meeting and Ankara Informatics Fair which were held on November 6-9 2014, in Ankara.
Many representatives of the informatics sector, including TAGES, were invited and 9 ministries of the Turkish Republic along with the Municipality of Ankara, Information and Communications Technologies Authority (ICTA/BTK) and the Digital Turkey Platform supported this event. #bilisim2014 tag was used for this event.
With the attendance of many important stakeholders; government authorities, private sector representatives, academicians, international organizations, non-governmental organizations and users, the annual meeting may be considered as the Cannes Festival of informatics. In this 4 days long event, many subjects were put on the table and were discussed by different interest groups.
In the event’s official web-site, the 24 work group topics and the Digital Agenda 2020 were given heavy importance. Some of the work group topics are also the pillars of the Digital Agenda 2020. If you haven’t read the report you can get more information about Digital Agenda 2020 and Turkey from the project TAGES coordinated, The Digital Agenda Going Local for Turkey Project from www.dijitalgundemtr.com
With many concurrent sessions, here are some of the highlights from the event.
Open Data
There were several sessions dedicated to this topic. The importance of open data in every sector and every moment of our lives is an open secret. However, which data should be open to the public eye and what could be the risks and benefits are the questions we have addressed before making decisions. Leyla Arsan, CEO of TAGES, pointed out the importance of open data during the open data session.
Leyla Arsan, talking at the Open Data Session
New Age Communication Technologies and the expectations from 5G
Image taken from onbile.com
Bulent Erbas, who is the expert on the topic Fast and Ultra-fast Internet in the Digital Agenda Going Local for Turkey Project, talked about 5G in this session. His presentation was followed by the panel named 4G/LTE and Reflections in Turkey. The moderator was Deniz Yanik, the vice president of BTK, and the panelists were Berat Bicen from Aselsan, Yuksel Yilmaz from TURKCELL, Metin Balcı from ARGELA, Savas Arikan from Ericsson and Cem Akoymak from AVEA.
We Lift the Barriers with IT
We Lift the Barriers with IT was a workshop organized by Mustafa Ozhan Kalac and Prof. Dr. Gonca Telli Yamamoto, the independent consultant of TAGES and one of the experts in the Digital Agenda Going Local For Turkey Project. Activities about the disabled and IT within the scope of Digital Europe, current practices and problems in Turkey and examples to best practices were planned for the first part of the workshop. The second part included exchange of opinion with participants to develop information technologies and services for the disabled in Turkey and to determine the road map within the scope of the EU Digital Agenda 2020. The workshop attended by representatives from public organizations, NGOs engaged in the disabled and IT activities, private sector and academicians. This workshop was done to address the needs of the disabled people and what kind of adjustments can be done in IT to help them live their lives better. On the second part of the workshop, the main topics discussed were education, accessibility and attainability.
Opening speech of the workshop by Prof. Dr. Gonca Telli Yamamoto
Microsoft Dev Camp
Another interesting activity of the meeting was the Microsoft Dev Camp. In this event the developers competed for the best idea to develop with the help of the experts. The highlight of the event in our opinion was the 14 year old boy, Arda Ozkal who also participated in this event. Hopefully there will be more young people interested in this kind of events.
Arda, talking about his software application ideas in Microsoft Dev Camp
