THE SEARCC executive committee recently held its final meeting prior to the South East Asia Regional Computer Conference 2000 in Manila.

The executive committee met at the Shangri-La Mactan Resort Hotel. Most of the meetings were held at the Shangri-La except the luncheon at the Marriott Hotel Cebu during the first day.

The highlight of the luncheon was a videoconference between Manila and Cebu that served as a proof of concept of the plan to show the conference nationwide to more than 100 schools and colleges.

The Manila SEARCC 2000 team presented the conference theme "e-Knowledge: Learning in a Connected World" and details of the exhibit, call for papers and special events entirely through the videoconference.

After the formal presentation, the Manila team and the executive committee members got to know each other and exchanged pleasantries, in electronic mode. The use of the videoconference technology to bring the conference live to students and small businessmen nationwide is a significant innovation that will be introduced in SEARCC 2000. This innovation reinforces the conference theme of learning in a connected world.

The videoconference was made possible through the cooperation of Moscom, Bayantel and Netlink.

The call for papers was received by the country SEARCC representatives for distribution in their countries.

SEARCC 2000 is targeted at two key sectors: small business and education.

Conference attendees will be able to follow sub-tracks of related sessions. For education, there will be sub-tracks for e-Learning, PC-aided instruction and administration. For small business, there will be two sub-tracks, e-Business and small business. The tracks will include sessions on management, success stories and applications, technology, vendor presentation and demos.