This year's edition of the most important European event in the field of Information Society Technologies will coincide with the launch of the EU's Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Development (FP 7).

IST 2006 will be held in Helsinki from the 21st to the 23rd of November, 2006.

The WINNET projects secretariat has with the support of the Swedish National Federation of Resource Centres for women,(NRC) in April 2006, submitted a proposal for organizing a networking session focusing on the gender aspects of ICT. The European Commission has responded to our proposal on the 28th of July asking us to integrate the proposal to the ideas submitted by The European Platform of Women Scientists (EPWS). As we had only one week to make the changes Eva Fabry,(secretary at NRC, who has since 2005 been involved in global networking together with the Center for Women and Information Technology in USA, CWIT) and written the original application, took the challenge to prepared the new merged proposal.

We are hereby happy to inform You that the new merged proposal was last week accepted by the EU Commission and is now published on the Commissions website. (300 proposals were submitted and 99 were selected in this first round)

The networking session is entitled: Women in ICT Contributing to an Innovative Europe.

To find out more about the event, go to or click on this line in the mail: http://europa.eu.int/information_society/istevent/2006/networking/index_en.htm#express

It is however of great importance that you not only read the information but that we now also jointly act and that as many of You register for the networking session now and come to Helsinki in November 2006!

What is at stake now is to share experiences and successful tools of our existing networks, but what is more important that we now have the unique opportunity to facilitate the creation of a European Center of Women in ICT with the support of and as a part of the WINNET Europe associations future actions and to explore possibilities of establishing a Network of Excellence under the European Frame work program for research and developmen, FP7 so as to enhance the role and visibility of women in ICT and new technology.

The final decision that allows us to arrange the event depends on how many comments and registrations we get!

To register go to:

http://europa.eu.int/information_society/istevent/2006/cf/itemlist.cfm?type=Session&status=Published and click on click on: Women in ICT contributing to an innovative Europe

We hope to see many of you in Helsinki and let us jointly take action for establishing the European Center of Women in ICT which would indeed by one of the great achievements of WINNET Europe!

For WINNET Europé

Britt-Marie Söderberg Torstensson and Eva Fabry

Britt-marie.torstensson@saga.se           eva.fabry@women.eu.com