Seeed Studio Wins “WSIS Prize 2023 Champion” Certificate for Using AIoT for Environment at UN ITU: Global Recognition of IoT2Wild Contest!
On March 15th, Seeed Studio was awarded “WSIS Prize 2023 Champion” prize certificate at the UN ITU, in Geneva, Switzerland. It’s a UN-level of recognition for the success of IoT2Wild Contest 2022 and the usage of ICTs for environment, which was awarded at ITU’s 14th World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum 2023.
Dear Community,
How’s your 2023 going so far? Any great news to share with our open tech community at global level? In fact, we actually have one to celebrate our #OpenTech4SDGs achievement today!
On March 15th, Seeed Studio was awarded “WSIS Prize 2023 Champion” prize certificate at the United Nations’ (UN) International Telecommunication Union (ITU), in Geneva, Switzerland (Figure 1). Since it’s a UN-level of recognition for the success of IoT2Wild Contest 2022 and the usage of ICTs for environment, Seeed’s Open Source Community and Branding Department and partners’ hard work, and makers’ innovations all over the world, we still can’t believe that we actually won this prize! This auspicious certificate was received by our Sustainability and CSR Manager, Ye Seong SHIN, who was representing Seeed Studio at ITU’s 14th World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum 2023. So, what’s the “Champion” prize? It’s a runner-up prize given to the world’s Top 5 projects that won the most votes from 360 nominated projects, originally out of 900 projects submitted worldwide for the 14th World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum 2023 – the world’s largest annual gathering of ‘ICTs for Development’ multi-stakeholder communities.
In fact, WSIS Forum is annually spearheaded by the ITU, and co-organized by UNESCO, UNDP and UNCTAD. In simple terms, the Forum is a well-recognized platform to learn the world’s latest technological trends, exchange information and networks, share the best practices, and build trans-sectoral partnerships towards accelerating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Figure 1. Seeed Studio Is Being Awarded “WSIS Prize 2023 Champion” at the UN ITU on March 15, 2023
ⒸITU, Ye Seong SHIN
More specifically, this priceless prize has been awarded by Mr. Seizo Onoe on behalf of ITU, who is the Director of ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau. We’d like to extend our sincere appreciation to all of our partners and makers who were involved, without whom this IoT2Wild Contest wouldn’t have won such a huge recognition from this UN event. Thank you very much Jinger Zeng and Jessica Tangeman from Hackster.io, Sarah M. W. Maston leading Project 15 from Microsoft, Bastiaan den Braber from Zambezi Partners, Andy Gan from Semtech, Travis Teague from Nova Labs, Joey Hiller from Helium, Adam Benzion from Edge Impulse, Cyril Ebersweiler from HAX and SOSV, Tomas Diez from Fab City Foundation and Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, Peng Zhao from The Paradise International Foundation, Himax Technologies, Inc., Chaihuo x.factory, as well as our Seeed Team (Eric Pan, Meilily Li, Alison Yang, and Rain Ye)!
For those who are curious, check out “Project Repository of IoT2Wild Contest for Sustainable Planet 2022” – available for free downloads (Figure 2):
Figure 2. The Cover of “Project Repository of “IoT2Wild Contest for Sustainable Planet 2022”
Furthermore, on March 13th (the first day of WSIS Forum 2023), Ye Seong also represented Seeed Studio’s booth to share a variety of experience and knowledge of Seeed’s #AIoT4SDGs and #OpenTech4Good initiatives like the IoT2Wild Contest 2022, not to mention Seeed’s industrial IoT products and open tech solutions with multi-stakeholders from all over the world. She met a great range of potential partners from companies, academia, UN agencies, governmental organizations, and NGOs. In particular, we are very happy and honored to have shared these knowledge and experiences with ITU’s Secretary General (Doreen Bogdan-Martin) and Deputy Secretary-General (Tomas Lamanauskas), the WSIS Forum 2023 Chairperson Designate and the Minister of Digital Transformation of the Republic of Slovenia (Emilija Stojmenova Duh), as well as the Director General of Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA) of UAE (H.E. Eng. Majed Sultan Al Mesmar) (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Experience and Knowledge Sharing With ITU’s Secretary General and Other Distinguished Guests at Seeed’s Booth
ⒸITU, Ye Seong SHIN
For reference, ITU is the UN specialized agency for information and communication technologies (ICTs), which was founded in 1865 to facilitate international connectivity in communications networks. They allocate global radio spectrum and satellite orbits, develop technical standards to ensure the smooth connectivity of networks and technologies, and strive to improve access to ICTs to underserved communities worldwide. (ITU, n.d.).
To this end, we’re greatly looking forward to burgeoning partnerships and collaborations for SDGs this year through harnessing AIoT, edge computing, machine learning, and blockchain!!! Stay tuned until next time! 🙂
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