New Delhi: The Delhi chapter of Computer Society of India (CSI), India's premier body of IT professionals, has announced the 38^th National Convention 2003, which is scheduled to be held at IIT Delhi from 11 to 13 December 2003. Delhi Governor Vijay Kapoor and Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit will be the guests of honour at the convention's inaugural function. CSI vice-president M L Tiwari made this announcement.

The theme of this mega event is 'Information, Computers and Telecommunications (ICT) for the Prosperity of Mankind'. The convention will aim to showcase the technological advances the country has secured in the field of IT and is expected to be attended by over 1,200 professionals and delegates, and 2,00,000 visitors and world-renowned speakers from various countries will deliberate on different issues. Apart from showcasing the latest and cutting-edge technologies to the user communities, the convention will focus on issues and challenges in taking ICT to the masses.

Says Jagdish Malhotra, chairman, Delhi chapter, CSI: "A country can make unbelievable progress if it can unleash the real potential of ICT technologies by taking it to the masses, especially in villages and other remote areas of the country. The theme of this year's convention revolves around this belief."

The various exhibition theme areas for the convention include distributed and network-based computing, VLSI, database management systems, computer vision and robotics, microprocessors and computer architecture, multimedia computing, artificial intelligence, weather forecasting, remote sensing, mobile computing, image processing, knowledge management, digital signal processing, embedded technologies, bioinformatics and biotechnology, and bilingual computing.

The convention's inaugural session is to be addressed by R A Mashelkar, director general of CSIR. The list of illustrious speakers at the convention includes Richard Russel, senior vice-president, Cray Inc, UA; S Chandrasekhar, FORE School of Management; R Sadananda, AIT, Bangkok; C R Muthukrishnan, IIT, Chennai; Aidan Lawes, CEO itSMF, UK; Y S Rajan, VC, Punjab Technical University; Yong Fook Seng, GNEE N Polytechnique, Singapore; Gary Sager, USA; S S Krishnan, USA; K K Paliwal, Brisbane University, Australia; Pradeep Baijal, chairman, TRAI; and many more.