The Internet Society is expanding its Next Generation Leaders (NGL) programme to include a pilot fellowship to the forthcoming Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Technology Foresight Forum in Paris on 29 September. Two NGL alumni; Vinayak Hegde and Rafid Fatani, have been selected to participate. Topics include Smart ICTs and Green Growth.
The Internet Society’s Next Generation Leaders programme blends coursework, practical experience and mentorship to help prepare young professionals from around the world to become the next generation of Internet technology, policy, and business leaders. New components are added as opportunities present themselves not only to benefit the participating individuals but also to bring people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives to the discussions.
The annual OECD event brings together policymakers from member and non-member governments, business, civil society, and the Internet technical community to discuss and identify the opportunities and challenges that technical developments present to the Internet Economy. The Foresight forums are designed to enable constructive dialogue between these key stakeholders on key Internet issues that have previously included RFID, Next Generation Networks, Participative Web, Smart ICT and Cloud computing.
“The Internet with its global communications networks and richness of data enables entirely new ways of addressing environmental challenges. Individuals and organizations are increasingly using innovative ICT applications for greater sustainability. But some issues remain to be addressed, e.g. relating to co-ordination between ICT and environmental policy communities, and will be addressed at this OECD Forum”, says Arthur Mickoleit, author of the new OECD report “Greener and Smarter. ICTs, the environment and climate change”.
As the coordinator of the Internet Technical Advisory Committee (ITAC) to the OECD, the Internet Society has participated in past editions of the OECD Foresight Forum.
The 2010 OECD Foresight Forum will focus on Smart ICTs and Green Growth and will be held in Paris on 29 September. As this is a pilot fellowship, the Internet Society invited participants of its other NGL components to apply. The two successful applications were submitted by:
• Vinayak Hegde (India): Currently working as a Lead Architect at Inmobi, a leading mobile Ad network, Hegde works on designing multi-datacenter networks, large-scale data-processing platforms and high-performance ad servers. Prior to Inmobi, he built network performance measurement tools at Akamai. His fields of expertise are large-scale networks, large-scale data processing and programming languages.
• Rafid Fatani (Saudia Arabia/UK): Fatani has been involved in the IT industry in a variety of roles since 1991. He is the founder and director of SASIconsult – Saudi Arabian Strategic Internet Consultancy, a leading Saudi ICT consultancy that offers an innovative portfolio of Internet related research and services. As well as being involved in the industry through the company, Fatani is in the final stages of his interdisciplinary PhD at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, looking at Global Internet governance and its implications on state actor policy formation.
The NGL programme is sponsored by organizations including: Nominet Trust and the Association Française pour le Nommage Internet en Coopération (AFNIC) and the European Commission. Full details of the Next Generation Leaders programme and its other opportunities are available here: http://www.InternetSociety.org/leaders/
