 Welcome to WSIS Forum 2017, here to talk about the stock-taking process at WSIS and its flagship event, WSIS Prizes. I am very happy to be joined by Vladimir Stankovic from ITU. Hello. Hello. Thank you for joining us. So, can you first talk about the history of stock-taking at WSIS? Yes, with pleasure. Thank you very much for having me in the studio. The WSIS stock-taking process started in 2004 as one of the processes of the WSIS Forum in the two-phase 2003 and 2005 that took place in Geneva and Tunisia with the idea to produce and establish an international repository for collecting the ICT projects from the ground representing how these new technologies can help the development. In 2010, WSIS stock-taking process took a new leap. We established the WSIS stock-taking online platform, the platform that makes stock-taking easier for our stakeholders to submit their projects, to also view and learn about other stakeholders' projects and to partner with them by sharing information that could be replicable in other regions and other countries. Since 2012, the community requested that some of these projects are actually also recognized for its work and we have started the WSIS Prizes Contest as an integral part of the WSIS stock-taking. Since then, on annual basis, we are running the WSIS Prize Contest and this year we had the seventh edition of the WSIS Prize Contest. And it's been a real success, hasn't it? Yes. Talk us through the numbers because I heard that this year you had a record number of applications. Yes, exactly. In the last two or three years, the trend is growing with the submissions. So in 2015, we had around 300 projects. Last year, we had already 311, while this year we had 345. But the big jump was from 2014 to 2015, from 150 to 300 projects. That was quite a big jump. It's very important to notice that this year we had altogether 600 submitted projects out of which 345 were nominated for the WSIS Prize Contest. Domination goes through the expert group here in ITU set up by the WSIS Action Line facilitators who are then moving them to the online voting. The online voting requests from the WSIS community that now is growing more and more, having 300,000 stakeholders registered the WSIS talk taking platform, who casted the votes for the WSIS Prize Contest with 1.1 million votes record high this year. So we are hoping that next year we will actually have even more submitted projects. We are hoping to reach 500 plus submitted projects and to engage the communities elsewhere from the traditional community stakeholders that we are having so far. So what does it take to be a winner? To be a winner of the WSIS Prize Contest, you need to have a good project, first of all, a project that impacts the society on the ground. Moreover, your community should also recognize your result by voting for your project in the online voting phase. After the online voting phase, the first five most voted projects are brought back to the expert group of the ITU experts who are then selecting the winner out of the first five most voted. Last year in innovation is that we also try to recognize the runner-ups and they are recognized as the WSIS Prize Champions. To be the winner also recognizes if you are implementing the WSIS Action Lines but also if your project is helping advance the sustainable development goals that were established in 2015. This new process will give us a better idea of how on the ground best examples are actually backing up the theory between the linkages of WSIS Action Lines and standard development goals. Right now we have around 650 projects since combined from the last year and this year and in the future we hope to have thousands of projects that will help the data that can actually be the data of future, very important for the future policy making. WSIS Prize is obviously your flagship event, it's very successful but it's not the only thing you do to accelerate stock taking at WSIS. So you have launched other initiatives this year haven't you? Can you take us through the initiatives you have launched this year? Yes, thank you very much for this question. This year we have launched the photo contest. This is the first time that WSIS Forum is hosting the exhibition of the photo contest. We are trying actually to see how photography can help advance SDGs by inviting the WSIS stakeholder community to provide us for images, pictures of underground ICT projects that are helping advance the development. Besides the WSIS photo contest we have also started this year the WSIS Prize corner where all the winners and champions are invited to freely in the open space present their work but also bring on their partners and maybe someone from the WSIS Forum participants as future partners. In addition to this this year we are pleased to announce the launch of the ICT for SDG application. This is available both on the Google Play and App Store on Android and iOS and this application really helps people understand the linkages between WSIS Action Lines and Sustainable Development Goals. The new updates coming up soon will also depict all the 650 projects that I just mentioned that are proving the linkages between WSIS Action Lines and Sustainable Development Goals and in the future we hope that this application will be used also for submitting the projects from around the world. Vladimir Stankovic, thank you very much for your hard work. I'm looking forward to the prizes next year. Thank you very much for having me. This is a great opportunity to promote what WSIS Prize is all about but even more what the WSIS stakeholder community is giving us. Thank you.