PICTI during its participation at the Palestinian IT Exhibition, Expotech 2008 announced the results of the Digital Arabic Content (DAC) Competition that was launched previously by PICTI funded by the UN-ESCWA and that aimed at spreading awareness about the importance of Digital Arabic Content Industry and enriching it in the Arab World, due to the importance of supporting entrepreneurs in this sector, and to what this industry provides such as employment opportunities for youth and how it contributes in supporting the economic development as an investment opportunity in the ICT sector in the Arab Region.
The launching of this competition was done through the workshops that were held at PICTI, in addition to the marketing campaign in the local newspapers, PICTI’s portal in which it published all related information such as design of the competition, application form, evaluation criteria, prizes and others.
As a result of the evaluation which was done by PICTI, the “Arabic Optical Character Recognition System” project which was submitted by Messrs. Abdelkarim Ka’abneh & Mohammed Imlaihat was found to be the best project in the competition in Palestine. The Arabic OCR project will be incubated at PICTI for a period of 10-12 months starting January 2009. It’s worth mentioning that the incubation process will not be limited to providing the winners with office space only, on the contrary, the winners will be hosted in an appropriate environment to support and develop their project by providing them with an equipped office including computers, fax machine, internet usage in addition to develop the winners personnel skills and capabilities in different areas, such as administrative, marketing, strategic and communication skills and also to provide the winners with legal, development and marketing consultations and also networking with investors and funders for the project.
Mr. Laith Kassis, PICTI General Manager thanked the evaluation committee and praised the role of the UN-ESCWA in spreading awareness about the importance of Digital Arabic Content Industry and enriching it.
In his turn, Mr. Hasan Omar, PICTI IT & Operations Manager stated that PICTI received a number of 16 applications and that the deadline for receiving applications was July 30th, 2008. He also added that the evaluation process was done by a specialized committee (professionals from the business, communications, marketing, management sectors in cooperation with the UN-ESCWA) and that the evaluation criterion was prepared earlier by the UN-ESCWA. |