ICT Allows Academic Exchanges over the Internet

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) allows traditional conferences to be substituted by e-conferences for discussion of key topics and preparation of conclusions that will be presented at a presential meeting.

A good example was the Marbena Forum, where scientists from all over Europe discussed marine biodiversity in the Mediterranean Sea, but this time they did not need to spend some days in a conference room, because they interacted on-line. A second forum took place on september 2002, and this time the on-line discussions were focused on the Marine Biodiversity in the Baltic Sea.

These on-line forums were the first of its kind dedicated to marine diversity and were organized by Marbena, one of several EU-supported projects on environmental research. The e-conference focused on several topics and the results are available at the European Platform for Biodiversity Strategy website.