Brussels 2006-12-13,14

I travelled to Brussels for discussions with EU project Officers and to participate in the Europe-Africa Concertation Meeting

05/15/06
Tour of the GAAS Information Institute

05/14/06
Permalink Dinner with President Luo

Sunday night we had the official banquet with President Luo of GAAS, who is also vice secretary of the party committee of Guangdong. Dr. Luo emphasized that the province of Guangdong was among the first in 1998 to bring internet services into rural areas. Bridging the rural digital divide would be one of their main goals and he wishes collaboration whit FAO on this

05/12/06
Meeting with the AGRIS group at CAAS

2 Colleagues from my group particpated in the IST event, organized by the European Commission to present 6th framwork projects on November 21-23 in Helsinki (http://europa.eu.int/information_society/istevent/2006/conference/index_...). Attached is the Presentation given by Marta Iglesias in the Networking session on Knowledge Infrastructures.

From the Discussion in the AGRIS ADVOCACY Taskforce

Dear Colleagues,

I am intervening the first time into this discussion and need to introduce myself. I am Johannes Keizer and I am working in the Agris secretariat at FAO liaising with more than 50 active AGRIS centres all over the world. I am also facilitating with Hugo Besemer the Content Management Taskforce of the new AGRIS initiative

It is only through the transfer and exchange of knowledge , both explicit and tacit, that research organizations can really have an impact on the global issues that are facing mankind in the third millennium. Towards this end, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) have joined forces, working collaboratively on several projects.

In May 2006 I participated in the founding conference of the IAALD Africa chapter in Nairobi. Together with Hugo Besemer I organized during the conference a meeting of the Agris Content Management Taskforce. I also visited KARI (Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute)

On invitation of the Guandong Acadamy of Agricultural Science, I visited in May 2006 the Academy in Guangzhou and various institutions in Guangdong Province. I took the oppportunity also for a backstopping mission to Beijing regarding the AGROVOC mapping project.

The presentations held in Beijing and Guangzhou are attached.

The Ecoterm meeting 2006 took place at FAO and was co-organized by Margherita Sini from my Group

Gaoyao Forestry lesser developed part of Guang Dong Province. Meeting with Information Center that has its own TV channel. DoA land is 550.000 acres . forest covering rate is 57%. Products are good quality rice, vegetables and aquaculture, 130 acres aquacultures. They producing also herbs. there are 500.000 farmers out of a population of 730.000. Producing rice and vegetables for the whole province. Cable tv in 99% of the villages. Some villages only of administrative level. Telephone covering rate 45%. 150.000 telephones. All towns are connected by optical fiber to the city. whole city has about 250 websites on city area 45% of families have a PC, whereas on village level this is only 1%.. Government has implemented office automation system.

I am in the Programm Committee of this interesting conference that tries to bridge the Digital Library and Semantic Web Communities in India. My group will present two papers at the meeting.

Conference Site