The e-G8 Forum, an important gathering of Internet leaders preceding the G8 economic summit, is underway! This morning French President Nicolas Sarkozy delivered a welcome address to an impressive audience of 1,000 Internet business leaders, engineers, policy makers, and press at the historic Tuileries Garden in Paris. His remarks targeted the Forum’s theme: accelerating Internet growth.
“Yesterday’s dreams have become realities, and the universe of possibilities grows broader around us every day. In just a few years, the Internet has enabled us to realize the dreams of Enlightenment philosophers, making our store of knowledge accessible to the widest possible audience. Democracy and human rights have been reinforced. States have been incited to greater transparency, and in some countries, oppressed peoples have been empowered to make their voices heard and to act collectively in the name of freedom.”
In attendance is a veritable “Who’s Who” of the Internet. Participants include Eric Schmidt of Google, Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia, Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, Rupert Murdoch of News Corp, Danny Hillis of Applied Minds, and Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum, to name a few. FORA.tv is pleased to be represented at this inaugural event.
The e-G8 Forum will focus on the Internet’s impact on the economy and society and will specifically address economic growth, job creation, value creation, and the transformation and modernization of traditional professions and industries. Panelists will also address the social and political issues that underlie the development of digital technologies, including privacy rights, intellectual property, human rights and democratization. The forum will ask (and try to answer) a number of key questions: What conditions in education, training and financing will encourage innovation in the digital economy? What are the best practices and economic models in the mobile Web revolution? What’s the future of e-commerce, and what paradigm-shifting technologies will create the Internet of tomorrow?