Datamatix

I would like to extend a warm welcome to all intellectuals, leaders, professionals, experts, visionaries, well-wishers and other supporters. More than 20 years ago, on the 13th of May 1989, Datamatix made a humble and very modest beginning as a provider of technical and business knowledge in the region. As I look back at those early days, I would like to thank all of you for your invaluable contributions - your initial curiosity, your drive to learn, and your continued attendance at our events - that has made us the success that we are today.

Once again I thank you all for your patronage, support, and friendship.

Best regards,

Ali Al Kamali,
Managing Director

At Datamatix, we have worked hard over these past 20 years to establish a strong identity as a knowledge resource for the region. Our mandate has always been to develop multinational partnerships, create valuable dialogue with people around the world, and nurture friendships. From the very beginning our aim was to tear down regional and global barriers and build bridges between people, cultures, and organizations.

We have enjoyed immensely the progress of the last 20 years - it was not always easy, but it was always challenging. It is our commitment and our determination that have brought Datamatix to the forefront and in touch with global leaders in business, economy, technology and politics. Globalization need not benefit only advanced nations. Indeed, in developing countries too, it brings the promise, but not the guarantee of a better future.

For 20 years, we at Datamatix have endeavored to introduce the latest ICT knowledge, build leadership skills, help improve the economy, empower women - and more in our region. And we hope to continue doing so for many more decades, we believe that knowledge is the single most important catalyst that will shape the lives of young people and spur true economic development.

Today we are embarking on a new journey for our next 20 years. A particularly significant element of this process is the emergence of a global media that delivers information in a flash, everywhere from Brazil to the UAE to China and beyond. In a single hour today, more people and goods move from city to city, country to country, continent to continent than moved in the entire 18th or 19th centuries. We are living a new reality and are pleased that, Datamatix today looks forward to dealing with the long term challenges affecting not just region, but the world.

At the beginning of this the new century and new millennium, half of the world's people are still struggling to survive. These trends and other troubling ones are likely to be worsened by a rapidly growing population that is expected to increase by 50% in the first half of this century. So the great question before us is not whether globalization will proceed, but how? And what is the responsibility of the developed world to try to shape this process so that it lifts people in all nations?

We all have both the ability and the responsibility to make a great deal of difference by promoting development and economic empowerment, by providing the knowledge needed to face challenges, by achieving sustainable development, by breaking the barriers to economic growth, and by closing the digital divide.

As borders disappear, the freedom of movement of people, information and ideas grows too at a spectacular pace. In today's open society, Datamatix and counterpart organizations can and will play the crucial role of developing and providing the latest knowledge.

Ignorance is no longer an excuse. We can choose not to act, but we can no longer choose not to know, regardless of whom we are and where we live. With the new changes in open markets; public investments by wealthy nations in education, health care and the environment in developing countries; and improved governance in those countries themselves, the Middle East region can develop a future in which prosperity is shared more widely and potential realized more fully than before.

We must do more to improve education and job-training, so that more people have the skills to compete in a world that is changing very rapidly. The region's countries must be less resistant change, so that spirited economic competition does not become a race to the bottom. It's important that we acknowledge that trade alone cannot lift nations, while innovation and reinvention can. And it is our aim, at Datamatix, to encourage and inspire this innovation amongst regional people and organizations through our varied events, awards, and services.

The digital divide is real - even in growing economies. Today, the citizens of South Asia are far less likely to have access to the internet than Americans. It is estimated that in 2010, in the Asian Pacific region, the top eight economies will have 72% of their people online; but the bottom 11 will have less than 4%. If that happens, the global economy really will resemble a world-wide web - a bunch of interlocking strands with huge holes in between.

An important question for our age is: Are computers and ICT a real solution for people who are starving or illiterate? Are eCommerce, eBusiness and eGovernment the right answers for villages that don't even have electricity? Other vital infrastructures have to be built in tandem with ICT to guarantee basic essentials for people who live at poverty level.

As Victor Hugo said, there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. The reverse is also true: there's no bigger curse than an idea that hangs on after its time has gone. No generation has ever had the opportunity we all now have to build a regional and global economy that leaves no one behind and, in the process, and to create a new century of peace and prosperity for the Middle East and for the entire world. It is a wonderful opportunity - and a profound responsibility.