Results of the Third International Festival of Noncommercial Internet Projects

The official ceremony of awarding winners of the III International Festival of Non-Commercial Internet Projects took place on March 25, 2006 in Moscow. The ceremony was the end of the final festival program that lasted from March 20 to March 26.

Festival organizers tried to make the final program as intense and interesting as possible by including master-classes, workshops and round tables. Special attention was given to regional aspect of Internet development. “Days of the RF regions” that also became a part of the regional RIF section were organized within the framework of the 10th Anniversary Russian Internet-Forum (RIF-2006).

his program will be continued with the RIF-marathon to be run by the Regional Public Center of Internet Technologies and the Russian Webmasters Union as a regional phase of the annual national prize for contribution to the development of Internet technologies – the Runet Prize. The round table devoted to organizing the RIF-marathon resulted in preliminary agreements between representatives of Trans Telecom and the Russian Webmasters Union concerning integration of the New Reality Festival and the International Festival of Non-Commercial Internet Projects as significant arrangements focused on Internet development in Russia’s regions.

The third festival became unique in the number of foreign projects. More than half of the applications – 1000 projects – were submitted by authors from 70 countries from all over the world. The festival comprised more than 2000 projects. The most deserving of them became winners and laureates in 16 festival nominations. According to the contest conditions, the jury set more value on the social significance of the projects than on their technical characteristics. Thus, in the nomination “Power and Society” the winner was the project “The Third Way” (Belarus), in the nomination “Rights Advocate” – the project “Human Rights in Russia” (Russia), in the nomination “Computer Technologies” – the portal devoted to the .org domain “Public Interest Registry” (USA). In addition, the jury noted the most original project “Black-And-White” by artist Dmitry Dmitriev (Karelia). Complete list of winners can be found on the official festival website www.festival.webmastera.org.

The winning projects were granted diplomas and valuable prizes from the Russian Webmasters Union and partners of the festival. This year for the first time a project that won in the nomination “Hope”, which was developed by a handicapped person, was awarded with the right to manage the Bitrix website – one of the best products in the market today.

Press-center of the Webmasters Union of Russian .