Keynote speaker to the Bangladesh Conference

Anir Chowdhury

Mr. Anir Chowdhury, D.Net Governing Body Member, is the Policy Advisor of UNDP-supported Access to Information Program, Prime Minister's Office and coordinates policy formulation and nationwide implementation of e-governance and e-service delivery. He is a member of the Prime Minister’s National Digital Task Force, Education Minister's National ICT in Education Task Force, and Planning Minister’s National Information Management Committee. He co-founded a number of not-for-profit organizations focused on ICT4D, e-Learning and Open Source, and a number of for profit companies in USA and Bangladesh focused on software outsourcing and business process re-engineering. As an IT strategist, he consulted for US Fortune 500 corporations such as IBM, Tyco, Kodak, Dell, Verizon, Lucent, and Prudential. Anir graduated magna cum laude in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from Brown University, USA and  studied management, marketing and education reform in Boston University, Harvard University and Columbia University, USA.

Daan Boom

Mr. Daan Boom is Programme Manager of Integrated Knowledge Management at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), headquartered in Kathmandu, Nepal. In this position Daan oversees the coordination and integration of the knowledge value proposition of the Centre including networking and capacity building for knowledge development with various selected partners.  He is involved in various Knowledge & ICT4D development initiatives in the region. Prior to this role Daan was head of the knowledge management centre of the Asian Development Bank, Manila, Philippines and Director Knowledge Management at the international accounting firm KPMG, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 

In recent years Daan contributed in various roles and capacities to knowledge based societies. His thinking on this topic is influenced by, among others, Daniell Bell, Peter Drucker, Ikujiro Nonaka, and Manuel Castells. Bell published "The coming of Post-Industrial Society" in which he paints a surprisingly accurate picture of the developments that have taken place since his book was published 30 years ago. Information society and knowledge society are terms used by Bell to explain the process of de-industrialization. In the information society, the creation, reproduction, and application of knowledge and information are the principal economic activities.  In 1993, Drucker was the first to talk about the knowledge worker. He argued that the basic economic resource - the means of production, to use the economist's term - is no longer capital, land, or labor, but knowledge. “Value is created by productivity and innovation." The Japanese organizational theorist Nonaka emphasized the learning processes of an organization through a process of externalization and internalization to improve organizational performance. Lastly, Castells in 1996 added a fourth and vital dimension to this - the concept of networking. He contributed greatly to the role of networks in the process of creating added value. Networks provide the basic structure of the information society. In addition two critical changes have taken place in the last 20 years: First access to knowledge has become critical in promoting good governance and in transforming societies and the second factor has been the enormous decline in the cost of transmitting knowledge - a direct result of the IT and Internet revolution that has swept the world including the application of web 2.0 technologies collaborative workspaces and social media tools.  

The conference aims to inform the audience on this new era and how social media and workspaces is revolutionizing how workers work, how organizations compete, how people learn and how information is used and applied. Advances in ICT are giving rise to a global, networked economy, characterized by the mobility and declining costs of transmitting information. To succeed in this increasingly competitive and global economy, countries must have an advanced ICT infrastructure, a highly educated workforce, dynamic research and innovation programs, and a supportive regulatory environment. They must have the know-how or capacity to generate, share and use knowledge. They also must have the efficiency to provide services and goods and the capability to protect intellectual property rights. 

Daan studied Library & Information Management in the Hague and Information Science in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Recent papers published and presented include Digital libraries at the International Conference on Digital Libraries, Delhi, 2011;  Concepts of e-learning at the International conference on ICT for development and education, 2010, Nepal; KM Strategies. Paper at international KM Conference,  Asian Institute of Technologies, 2010; Policies for knowledge economies Asian Development Bank Institute, 2006/7, Tokyo.;  Towards Knowledge Based Development,  ADB working paper,  2007; ICT for Development, World Bank/ Development Gateway, 2007; Knowledge for development, KM4Dev Journal, 2005.