Think Tank - Open BRIC - Digital leadership: shaping the future (by invitation only) - Part 2

Think Tank - Open BRIC - Digital leadership: shaping the future

The BRIC thesis holds that four countries—Brasil, Russia, India, and China—are set to surpass the GDP of the G7 in 2035 and could become the four most dominant economies in 2050.  Not only do these four countries represent 25% of the world's land coverage, 40% of the world's population, and boast a combined $15T USD GDP, but they are also among the largest and fastest-growing emerging markets.  How will trends in information technology, especially in Free / Open Source Software, influence the future of the BRIC countries (and other fast-growing emerging economies) and their roles in the world economy? 

September 30, 2010, from 11:00 AM to 04:00 PM - Register >

The BRIC thesis is based largely on 20th century economic assumptions and trends.  It predicts that China and India will become the dominant suppliers of manufactured goods and services and that Brazil and Russia will become similarly dominant suppliers of raw materials, but it says nothing about Information Technology (IT) per se.  This oversight in the original thesis has not been overlooked by the leaders of the BRIC countries, who each recognize the strategic value of IT in a 21st century economy, and who each have initiated ambitious IT agendas on a national basis.  But are the plans ambitious enough?

Just as the BRIC countries are rewriting the world economic order, Free / Open Source Software is reordering the IT industry.  The goal of the BRIC Summit Think Tank at the Open World Forum is to convene national-level IT policy-makers as well as Free / Open Source leaders and Competence Centres from around the world to discuss and define the requisite set of common IT competencies necessary to support—and benefit from—the  enormous changes anticipated by the BRIC Thesis.  The BRIC Summit Think Tank is also an ideal context in which to define a process of collaboration to ensure that the future currency of information technology is transparent and well-diversified, stable and secure, and has predictable performance.