Digitise the Nation Events #DTN

This week is the big push before the first ever Digitise the Nation Week. The IIA, is calling on companies and individuals across Ireland to help ‘Digitise the Nation’ from May 16th to 21st 2010.  The week long campaign is designed to showcase the power and capabilities of the Internet to the broadest set of groups from businesses, consumers, students, children to grandparents.

The week encapsulates five themes covering:

• Monday 17th – Business Productivity
• Tuesday 18th – Connectivity
• Wednesday 19th – Entrepreneurship
• Thursday 20th – IIA 2020Vision Conference and Net Visionary Awards
• Friday 21st – The Consumer and Social Media

Some of the events coming up include:

• Drimnagh will be taking part in the Digitise the Nation event on Tuesday’s Connectivity Day, the 18th of May. They will be holding 3 open, informal Social Media Surgeries from 10-12pm, 2-4pm and 7-9pm. The venue for this event is in the St John Bosco youth centre on Davitt Road, Drimnagh, Dublin 12. It will be free of charge and open to anyone who wants to learn more about any of the social media tools.

• Kavaleer (award winning digital animation business based in Digital Hub) will be showing primary school students how digital art is created; sharing with the children how cartoons are made and inspiring the next generation of Brown Bag Productions and Oscar winning “Avatar” creators.

• Cipherion Translations are experts in bringing businesses global – and helping them to market locally in over 40 languages. They support organisations in ICT, E-learning, Tourism, Technology and Life Sciences sectors as they translate their materials for overseas audiences. As part of Monday’s Business Productivity Day, they want to share the steps you should take to translate and localize your website for these markets.

• In Dublin, local computer training business A&A Computer Training have successfully approached their local “Golden Oldies” community group and are showing them how to make Skype calls and send emails.

• In Cork, Puddleducks.ie is running an interactive competition for children. Children and families are invited to take part in an online treasure hunt which is a wonderful opportunity for parents to introduce their children to the internet in a safe, supervised and fun way.

• There will be webinars conducted by Krishna De, Ann Donnelly and Peter Fry.

• Tim Willoughby from Local Government Computer Services Board (LGCSB) is supporting us by allowing our members to use the local libraries to host suitable events.

This week is a superb opportunity to help demystify the Internet for everyone in society.  The internet now forms a daily part of many peoples life but much of the capability from video calling relatives in other parts of the world to using social media for business are still largely untapped.  We are inviting companies and individuals to organise their own events during the week, based around the themes and to reach out to people who would not ordinarily have the opportunity to take advantage of the digital world.

This is an opportunity for every one of our members to bring their skills and capabilities to the very widest audience, showing everyone how the internet can be used to communicate with friends and family, transact business to business and business to consumer.  We are also hoping that this initiative will help show the diversity of internet usage throughout the country.

A specially designed site promoting all the activities taking place throughout the country is  available on  www.iia.ie/DTN.