AN international jury of ICT experts has nominated ShopCaricom.com from Guyana to enter the next round of the 2013 World Summit Award (WSA) in the e-Business & Commerce category, where ShopCaricom.com will compete against almost 500 outstanding e-content products and applications from 168 countries.

The event is set to take place in front of the WSA’s Grand Jury from Aug. 29 to Aug. 31 in Estonia’s capital city of Tallinn.
Shop Caricom.com is the brainchild of Barbadian-born Guyanese-bred entrepreneur Dax Kissoon, founder of DKG Inc. (a sister company to the well-established A.H.&.L Kissoon Ltd furniture and home furnishings store).
Being similar to other large online e-merchants, like Amazon.com, ShopCaricom.com has hundreds of local products, including household furniture and antiques, books, jewellery, paintings, sculpture and sporting goods; and provides an outlet for sellers throughout the Caribbean Community to reach the rest of the world.
In the first round of the international competition, an online jury will evaluate the ventures, creating a shortlist of 15 to 20 projects in each of the eight categories. After this, in a three-day process in late August, the WSA Grand Jury, consisting of international renowned ICT experts and industry leaders, will meet in Tallinn, Estonia, to evaluate the submissions from the remaining nominees and select the 40 best products.
The jury members of the Grand Jury come from all continents, and have backgrounds in the creative industries, telecommunications, advertising, journalism and research, as well as in teaching. The jury will be hosted by national partners such as the Estonian ICT Cluster.
Finally, the world’s 40 best e-content applications (five products in each of the WSA categories) would be selected to present their products in front of an international audience in Colombo, Sri Lanka, from Oct. 23 to Oct. 25.
The categories of the World Summit Award (WSA) are: e-Government & Open Date, e-Health & Environment, e-Learning & Science, e-Entertainment & Games, e-Culture & Tourism, e-Media & Journalism, e-Business & Commerce, and e-Inclusion & Empowerment.

WSA World Congress 2013
After the selection in Estonia, the 40 WSA winners will get the chance to present their products at the WSA World Congress in Sri Lanka from Oct. 23 to Oct. 25.
The event will offer a platform for high-level experts, industry leaders and government representatives to discuss innovation in mobile content. At the event, an on-site jury will again evaluate the products to select eight overall winners.

Global Champions
“With the winners from World Summit Award in e-Content, Colombo will host the best digital producers, interaction designers and content developers from all around the world. They will demonstrate the richness and diversity of the content industries. With Estonia, a country where access to free Internet is a fundamental right of the people, we are glad to have found the perfect location for the Grand Jury.” (Peter A. Bruck, chairman of the World Summit Award)

World Summit Award
The World Summit Award (WSA) is the global follow-up initiative of the United Nations World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), organised by the International Center for New Media (ICNM) in Salzburg, Austria. It partners with key UN organisations and agencies in the framework of the UN Geneva Agenda and the Tunis Action Plan, and selects and promotes the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications.
To date, more than 160 countries are actively involved. Through national pre-selections and contests, together with a global jury process, WSA demonstrates the local diversity and rich creativity of ICT use.
WSA is a global hub for everyone who values the crucial importance of local content to make today’s information society more inclusive.
Visit WSA on www.wsis-award.org, facebook.com/WorldSummitAward and twitter.com/WSAoffice