This week we held our regional INET in Colombo, Sri Lanka. It was a timely event as it marked the 20th anniversary of the Internet in Sri Lanka. As part of the welcome reception on Monday night, the Sri Lankan community recognised 25 people who contributed to the early development of the Internet in Sri Lanka. The evening was full of stories and experiences from those who helped build the early Internet with many fond memories being narrated by the inductees.
A regional workshop for ISOC chapters from the Asia-Pacific region was held just prior (also in Colombo) with delegates from chapters focusing on topical issues and exploring collaboration opportunities.
The conference proper began on Tuesday morning with a great lineup of speakers including:
- Hon. Eran Wickramaratne (Deputy Minister for Highways and Trade Promotion, and Founding Chairman of ICT Agency of Sri Lanka) on e-Sri Lanka initiative
- Prof. Munasinghe (formerly World Bank and Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – IPCC) on Sri Lankan ICT and linkages to development and sustainability
- Harish Pillay from Red Hat on Singapore: Finding the Soul of a Smart Nation
- Prof. Kilnam Chon on Internet Past, Present and Future
- Raul Echeberria (ISOC) on Current Challenges in Internet Governance,
- Prof. Kanchana Kanchanasut on the Thai Internet Experience: 25 years on
- Satish Babu on Network Neutrality and End-user Perspectives
The event was highly successful with over 1000 participants. Of these, 200 were on-site in Colombo and the other 800 were spread across 7 remote hubs around Sri Lanka. It was appropriate that the Internet Society and its Sri Lanka Chapter used the power of the Internet to deliver this event to a geographically dispersed audience. Full credit to the Sri Lankan chapter for making this happen.
The event was also webcast and the full archive is available here.
We also have the event on Storify which has tweets and the Livestream archives in chronological order.
Photo credit: Eran Wickramaratne on Facebook