By Jae So, Guest Columnist

Did you know that around the world, 2.5 billion people lack access to sanitation? This causes billions of dollars of economic losses every year, and claims the lives of 4,000 children each day. Yet of these 2.5 billion people, who make up one-third of the world’s population, 1 billion have access to mobile phones, creating an important opportunity to mobilize innovation for the sanitation sector.

A year ago, the World Bank asked: How can we work with partners to use these 1 billion connections to promote healthier behaviors and improve access to sanitation services, such as containment of waste water? The result is the Sanitation Hackathon, a yearlong strategic process that is a project of the World Bank’s water practice and ICT sector, working together with governments and citizens around the world with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Read More »

Tags: contest, ICT, mobile phone, sanitation, Sanitation Hackathon, VNI-SA, World Bank, world water day

Education leaders and innovators around the world are transforming education today. Please join us on March 19th (Americas and EMEA) or March 20 (Asia Pacific), for the Cisco Virtual Forum for Education Leaders, to see how they are shaping the future of education.

During this free global conference, which you can attend from the convenience of your desktop or mobile device, you can participate in live roundtable discussions on leading-edge strategies and practical solutions that are improving the quality of education.  The Forum opens with a keynote session with Dr. Larry Johnson, CEO of the New Media Consortium, and Dr. Ellen Junn, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at San Jose State University, on Trends Shaping the Future of Education. The keynote will followed by  breakout sessions for K-12 schools and higher education. There will also be a virtual exhibit hall featuring resources and information on how Cisco solutions can help transform teaching and learning.

The Virtual Forum will also feature live Moderated Chat sessions with Cisco education experts on the technologies supporting the latest trends in education including BYOD, flipped learning, social collaboration, ICT education, desktop virtualization and more. We’ll also include a session in Brazilian Portuguese.

Read More »

Tags: byod, edchat, education, Flipped Learning, highered, ICT, netacad, vdi, video collaboration, vxi, WebEx Social

By Howard Baldwin, Contributing Columnist

Lou Zacharilla, co-founder of the Intelligent Community Forum, has a foolproof way of identifying which cities are most likely to be successful deploying broadband networks: business cards.

The ones who do well at broadband, he says, are the ones whose municipal employees collaborate across departmental boundaries, and with elected officials.

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Tags: broadband, business clusters, economic development, government, ICT, intelligent community

By Adele Waugaman, Guest Columnist

In Jordan a revolution is brewing, but unlike in neighboring countries being reshaped by the Arab Spring, this revolution has the support of the King.

A culture of entrepreneurship, fueled by a boom in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector, is quietly transforming the country by creating new businesses and jobs.

Read More »

Tags: entrepreneurs, healthcare, ICT, Jordan Education Initiative, medical, mHealth, Middle East, mobile, VNI-SA

Busan is at the forefront of something big.

As South Korea’s second-largest metropolitan city, Busan boasts a population of about 3.6 million, and is home to a slew of major companies, government agencies, universities, annual festivals, and conferences. Busan is the country’s largest container-handling port, and the fifth- largest in the world. Like other metropolitan areas, the city struggles with managing terrible traffic congestion and the attendant high logistical costs; maintaining job-creation momentum for the 60,000 high-quality and high-skill job seekers who graduate from area universities each year; and meeting the demand for an innovative city operations system that helps ensure global competitiveness.

Cisco IBSG has been working with Busan’s Metropolitan Government to develop plans for a “u-City.” U, in this case, stands for “ubiquitous,” which also describes the city’s broadband penetration. Busan’s “smart and connected” urban communities use the network as a platform—on top of which it can deploy innovative urban-planning solutions and city management services. The city uses the network to connect, process, and share information efficiently, and in real time. Read More »

Tags: BMAC, Busan, Cisco, city management, city services, cloud, cloud services, IBSG, ICT, infrastructure, mobile applications development, network, smart and connected, Smart City, South Korea, u-City, urban planning