Deadline: August 31, 2020
Is your digital solution making a local impact in your community? Submit it now for World Summit Awards 2020.
The World Summit Awards are a unique awards system, selecting and promoting local digital innovation with high impact on improving society. Is a non-monetary award system with a focus on sustainable knowledge transfer through a worldwide network. Winners benefit not from a one-time financial reward, but a lifelong partnership and integration.
Combining an ongoing series of international events and activities with a global network of start-ups, social entrepreneurs, mentors, jurors, speakers, experts, government leaders, academia and civil society, WSA is an international platform for cutting edge examples on how ICTs can have an impact on society. Running 15 years by now, WSA has become a quality seal for digital content with societal impact in over 180 participating countries.
Categories
WSA categories reflect the UN WSIS action lines and are updated regularly to meet the development of the markets. For the edition of the World Summit Awards 2020 the categories are:
- GOVERNMENT & CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT – services | open data | democratic participation
- HEALTH & WELL BEING – medical care | sport | lifestyle
- LEARNING & EDUCATION – knowledge | science | skills
- ENVIRONMENT & GREEN ENERGY – climate | sustainable resources | agriculture
- CULTURE & TOURISM – heritage | entertainment | subcultures
- SMART SETTLEMENTS & URBANIZATION – mobility | productive work | sustainable living
- BUSINESS & COMMERCE – innovative services | security | finance | marketing
- INCLUSION & EMPOWERMENT – diversity | gender | justice | human right
Benefits
The World Summit Awards are a non-monetary award system with a focus on sustainable knowledge transfer through a worldwide network. This means that winners benefit not from a one time financial reward, but a lifelong partnership and integration.
Winners receive:
- Invitation to the WSA Global Congress in Vienna including:
- Pitching seminars
- 4 minute pitch session in front of an international audience during the Congress
- A program of especially crafted workshops for the winners
- Invitation to the prestigious award ceremony and Gala night
- Board and lodging for the durance of the Congress
- Eye to eye exchange with speakers, jurors and international guests
- Integration into a network of internationally recognized digital content developers
- Access to the WSA community of global experts and industry leaders in over 180 countries
- Interaction with world-renowned sponsors and partners of the WSA community
- Workshops specially shaped for the winners needs
- A videoclip highlighting the winners projects
- Special placement on WSA website, youtube channel and social media promotion
- Long-term coverage within WSA editorial channels
Nominee Benefits
A nomination for the World Summit Award is already a win – these are the rewards
- More coverage on your product. WSA provides nominees with press templates to help them to gain the attention of national media with support of the WSA national experts
- World Summit Award nominee seal to use on websites, social media channels and publications
- Opportunity to receive feedback from the jurors.
- Being nominated for the World Summit Award means to be the best in the respective country in one of our 8 categories. Our experience has shown that this qualification can immensely improve outreach.
Eligibility
- Any company, organisation or individual from all UN and UNESCO member states are welcome to apply.
- The World Summit Award (WSA) looks for digital applications that have a strong impact on society in one of the 8 WSA categories.
PRODUCTS
- WSA is strictly restricted to digital applications with a strong impact on society.
- Submissions for the WSA can contain mobile applications, sms based products, webpages, databases, kiosk installations, wearables, IoT etc. There is no limitation regarding the platforms or channels the projects work with.
- The projects can be max. 2 years old at the date of nomination.
- No ideas, drafts, demonstrations or concepts are accepted, all submitted projects must be market ready or already on the market.
- WSA evaluates and highlights the content, user value and local impact of digital solutions.
Nomination
- The World Summit Awards are a nomination based award system. To participate you need to be nominated by a WSA National Expert as the best national digital application in one of the 8 categories.
- The nominations to WSA are possible through national contests and national Expert panel selection. Each country can only nominate one project/solution per category.
- Find out who your WSA National Expert is. Then you can contact the WSA office and them will be happy to introduce you to your WSA National Expert. Once you have contacted your expert, they will go through the steps you will need to take in order to qualify for national selection with you.
Through this high-level selection system, please be aware that every country has their own deadlines for the call. The generally communicated WSA deadline is the timeframe of the global call and communicates the last possible date of a nomination by the national expert panel.
For more information, visit World Summit Awards.
