The banquet theme for the AVAR Conference was "Anti-Virus Begins with Education" and Karen Cheung (Organising Committee Chair and Yui Kee Computing Business Development Manager) introduced two projects.
The first one started with a story: Around a year ago. A lecturer from Chu Hai College called Yui Kee Computing to join one of their school projects, by supervising a group of part-time Information Technology students to accomplish a project, so that these students will learn from the process and they would make something useful. The students were convinced to create a web site aim at assisting young people to learn about Ethics, Safety and Security on Information Technology.
Ms Cheung and Mr. Dyer advised the students over a couple of meetings during the project and were happy to see some results.
The students, Mr. Alex Leung, Denny Mo and Gordon Luk, presented their educational multimedia website and explained some of the ideas behind the design. It is a fresh, fun approach, by young people, for young people.
Alex, Denny and Gordon started a candle-lighting ceremony, passing light to each table as Karen with the metaphor of “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness” explained that, in the journey of Anti-virus, we see new viruses coming out everyday, created by people whom have the computing skills but not the computing ethics and, to build a bigger force of Anti-virus and awareness of information security, we rely on Education in all forms and all directions. She invited everyone to take the idea back to their country to share with educators and learners, and build up many more different learning resource sites, with young people around the world. Perhaps in less than a year’s time, we’ll have Japanese, Indian, Icelandic, Korean, Czech - multiple language learning kits that AVAR can gather together in cyberspace.
The student's project is included on the Conference CD-ROM in Chinese and English, and is currently at http://www.anti-virus.com.hk/
The second project under the Anti-Virus Beings with Education theme was a starting point - Mr. Dyer announced that the Hong Kong Chapter of AVAR would be starting a project to develop an international standard for certification of anti-virus professionals, and said he would be seeking support and assistance for the project.