[27
APR 99] CWN PRESS RELEASE
CWN Parties with the King
of SwedenThe local
Internet project CWN will be celebrating its fourth birthday in Stockholm with the King of
Sweden.
CWN – The Coventry and Warwickshire Network –
has been selected as one of the finalists in the worldwide Bangemann Challenge Internet
competition.
The Bangemann Challenge is hosted by the City of Stockholm
and this year had over 900 entries from around the globe.
CWN was entered in the ‘Public Services and
Democracy’ category for its innovative and hugely successful local news and
information service for Coventry and Warwickshire ( www.cwn.org.uk ).
CWN representatives have been invited to the Awards
Ceremony in Stockholm where prizes will be presented to the winners by the His Majesty the
King of Sweden.
Chris Studman, founder and editor of CWN, is delighted at
being selected as a finalist:
"This is a wonderful recognition of the hard work that
has gone into CWN. It is especially good timing to come on our fourth birthday and it
would be a magnificent birthday present if we do win – if not it will still be a
great experience to be at the Awards Ceremony.
"CWN from its early days as Coventry Community Network
has very much been a community project. We haven’t had the luxury of backing from big
business or large public grants. It’s all been made by the blood, sweat and mouse
clicks of dozens and dozens of contributors over the last four years."
NOTES:
- The Global Bangemann Challenge is a Stockholm based world
wide Awards Program that highlights and promotes the best practices of communication
technology for citizens and communities. The Global Bangemann Challenge is named after EU
Commissioner Dr Martin Bangemann, who presented The Bangemann Report in 1994. It is a
collection of guidelines for Europe on its way into the information society.
The City of Stockholm decided in late 1994 to respond to the Bangemann report by launching
an "Information Technology Challenge" and invited cities in Europe to show their
smartest projects that promote health and prosperity for their citizens.
The program ran successfully for two years and terminated in early 1997 with an Awards
Ceremony in the presence of the King of Sweden. At that same moment the Global Bangemann
Challenge was inaugurated as a world wide continuation of the European Challenge.
- The Global Bangemann Challenge has 11 categories including
Electronic Commerce, Lifelong Learning, Information Technology for Small and Middlesized
Enterprises, and the category that CWN entered in Public Services and Democracy. CWN was
selected as a finalist from over 140 entries in its category.
- CWN is one of Britain’s leading Internet-based local
news and information services. It was set up in June 1995 and since then has grown to over
11,000 pages of information about Coventry and Warwickshire.
It has almost 50,000 visitors reading over 125,000 pages every month. The number of
visitors is currently doubling every four months.
The web-based service is totally free to access and available 24 hours a day, 365 days a
year at www.cwn.org.uk .
- CWN is managed by Ecosaurus a local Internet company that
specialises in Internet projects in the educational, environmental and community sectors.
MORE INFORMATION: Chris Studman 01203 630476
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