ITU Telecom World 2011 takes off in Geneva today with live webcasts of key events from the Opening Ceremony at 12.00-13.00 CET to the Closing Address at 16.00-17.00 CET on Thursday 27th. The forum brings together industry CEOs and world leaders, digital experts, technology gurus, and grassroots technology pioneers to tackle core issues shaping the global ICT landscape in the age of broadband technology through knowledge sharing, networking, deal making, and consensus building.

An interesting feature of this years’ forum in which Telecentre.org is collaborating with ITU to bring to bare is the opportunity for the whole world to get involved through a new model of ‘crowdsourcing.’ Crowdsourcing enables firms, organizations, foundations etc. to open up an “issue” to the public (away from a small pool of experts) and seek solution from as many ‘crowd’ as possible. Allows companies or institutions to take functions once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call. It is gradually being seen as a web-based business model that harnesses the creative solutions through distributed network of individuals.

Several months prior to the forum, the power of crowdsourcing was used to gather rich contributions from the general public through stories created through videos,  ideas, and questions.

Over 30 stories presented through videos have been uploaded at the site. Stories cover issues such as making affordable broadband access to thousands of SMBs in the tourism industry in Vietnam; using mobile phones and TRACnet in Rwanda to help with the treatment and prevention of AIDS; deploying mobile and web tools to enable citizen reporters to give early warning about human rights violation, among others.

There are over 100 ideas brought up by people across the world from using “Justxt.org” mobile platform to empower victims of corruption by giving them the ability to anonymously report demands for bribes via cell phone using a simple SMS (UK); QUICKSMSs that will allow secondary schools to communicate with student and parents instantly (Rwanda); integration of a VoIP service on GSM mobile to allow two or more people with the Internet service on their mobile phones to communicate for free (Benin);  real time validation of mobile phone “Sim Cards” for authenticity of the user to prevent cheating and fraud (India) and a host of other ideas.

The number of questions posed was rather small but covering issues such as standards in place to promote universal experience on the Internet for people with disabilities; regulatory bodies or authorities to ensure full access to the Internet by people with disabilities (USA); the challenge of achieving a digital economy whilst the digital divide is alive and well; the need for telecommunication companies, governments, and ISPs to work together to cement freedom of the internet for everyone (USA); how are governments measuring the impact of their policies for stimulating growth, GDP and employment, from the use of ICT (UK); and what or how much would it take to completely bridge the digital divide gap in our world (Lesotho).

Highlights of the 3-day program include “Pathway to a Connected World” on Tuesday that will  feature  ITU Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun Touré; Igor Shchegolev, Minister of Communications and Mass Media, Russian Federation; Jianzhou Wang, Chairman & CEO, China Mobile; and Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy, Australia and will be moderated by BBC World presenter Nik Gowing. The discussion will continue on Wednesday on “Digital Cities”, an issue  centred around the challenges of urbanization, the Digital Cities stream features leading stakeholders in city development, including mayors of the world’s major cities, digital innovators, utility experts, industry CEOs and city planning and transport specialists. The Thursday session titled “Heads in the Cloud”  will examine the rapid spread of cloud computing, and taking a look at questions around how people, organizations, and governments will handle information and interactions in the cloud environment.

Live sessions will be streamed and for full coverage visit the ITU Telecom World 2011 site and also follow events on Facebook and through the @ITU_News twitter account #ITUworld11.