CALENDAR.

* Congres international sur la societe de l'information - IT4ALL

Bilbao will host the so-called IT4ALL congress from February 4 to 7, which this year is entitled "Opportunities and Challenges for the Regions in the New Information Society". The forum has been created to help "define some of the main issues that will lead to a fairer and more democratic development of societies in the future." The hosts say that the globalisation process is generating an unequal distribution of wealth, development and opportunities. "In order to compensate for this lack of equilibrium, the different regions and its regional governments could play a key role thanks to their capacity to handle problems with more ease and with a perspective that is much closer to its citizens and their requirements and interests," IT4ALL says. "They alone are able to create policies to guarantee levels of social, economic and political development that are in line with existing opportunities."

The Congress is backed by the European Commission's Directorate-General for the Information Society, as well as by the United Nations/International Telecommunications Union.

For further details: http://www.bilbaoit4all.com

* TRIS cultural heritage trials

The European Commission's Directorate General for Information Society will host in Luxembourg on February 13 and 14 a demonstration of the TRIS results. TRIS is a project that experiments with existing technologies to find novel ways of creating, manipulating, managing and presenting new classes of digital cultural objects, held by archives, libraries and museums across Europe. The Luxembourg event will showcase the results of 25 take-up trial projects launched in 2000, under the Action Line 'new access modes to cultural and scientific content'.

The TRIS project involved more than 80 small cultural institutions, run by local authorities or by SMEs with local interests, the trials aim at enhancing the user experience, by providing innovative means of exploration, learning and entertainment. The trials are...