Under the patronage of His Excellency The Prime Minister of Jordan, Dr. Adnan Badran, attended on his behalf by Her Excellency Mrs. Nadia Al-Saeed, Minister of Information and Communications Technology in Jordan, with HRH Princess Sumaya Bint El-Hassan, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Princess Sumaya University for Technology (PSUT), Dr. Hisham Ghaseeb, President of PSUT, Dr. Bernard Chapelet, Grenoble Ecole de Management from France, and Dr. Arafat Awajan, EBEL 2005’s Organizing Committee Chair, attended yesterday the official opening ceremony of the commencement of the first international conference on E-Business and E-Learning EBEL 2005.
Princess Sumaya University for Technology (PSUT) is holding the conference in cooperation with the Euro Mediterranean partnership programme MEDFOREST within the framework of activating scientific research in the field of information technology pertaining to E-Business and E-Learning with the aim of showcasing the latest in modern technology in these field and studying the possibility of applying this technology in the business and education sectors in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
In her speech, HRH Princess Sumaya Bint El-Hassan, PSUT’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees, stated” PSUT welcomes and organizes this conference as a forum where experts from Jordan, Mediterranean and European countries may gather in exchange of ideas, expertise and practices. PSUT understands the importance of new technologies and innovations to advancing the e-learning platforms, an essential tool for education and training activities. PSUT goes beyond education as it integrates e-business, e-learning and e-applications to advance IT in Jordan and the region.
Dr. Bernard Chapelet, Grenoble Ecole de Management, in his speech highlighted, “The project is a fruit of the Euro-Mediterranean cooperation. In 1995, in Barcelona, representatives of the governments of Europe and Mediterranean countries agree on common objectives for both parts of the Mediterranean Basin. Among these common objectives was the building of the Information Society, a society which, based on Information and Communication Technology, value knowledge as the source of wealth.” He added, “This gave birth to the EUMEDIS program, an initiative of the European Commission to initiate collaboration between institutions from Mediterranean countries and Europe in different domains of the Information Society such as Education, Health, Tourism and Cultural Heritage, Commerce and Industry, Research. MEDFORIST is one out of 5 projects in the domain of Education.”
Dr. Hisham Ghaseeb, President of PSUT in his welcoming notes stated, “This international IT conference is the first substantive fruit of the Euro- Mediterranean collaborative initiative, the MEDFOREST project, and of our (PSUT's) MOU with the Grenoble Ecole de Management (GEM). The name of the game in all such collaborate activities is information and knowledge networks; establishing such networks with the ultimate aim of constructing a global research community and a globally extended knowledge producing enterprise. This aim is particularly important for the Mediterranean countries, which are already interlinked and connected with layers of inter-meshed natural networks bestowed by a rich shared history.”
Dr. Arafat Awajan, in his welcoming notes stressed that: “40 research papers will be presented during the two days of the conference from a collection of more than 100 submitted papers from 28 countries. All submissions were carefully reviewed by two or three members of the Program Committee and their recommendations were used for selection. In addition to the research papers, four keynotes by leading experts in the main areas of the conference will be presented. 2 workshops are also organized: A workshop on e-learning and a workshop on electronic Customer Relationship Management. An exhibition featuring industrial Demonstrations is organized in parallel with the conference.”
The conference includes a number of activities in addition to the academic meetings have expanded in to training workshops on E-Learning and E-Client Servicing, as well as panel discussions on scientific research at British universities in the fields of E-Commerce and lectures on fundamentals. An exhibition for Jordanian software producing companies has been setup within the conference.
The conference is sponsored by a number of local and international institutions and companies. He added that in addition to the EUDEMIS program for Euro Mediterranean partnership, which is funded by the European Union and the MEDFORIST network, the conference activities would be sponsored by the MICROSOFT company for software manufacturing, the Jordanian Minhaj Company, and the Electronic Directory for Arab Law. The conference is also sponsored by the Jordanian-UK initiative, Get Connected Jordan UK, and the Jordanian association for computers.
