I had the opportunity today to attend Lao Digital Week 2024. While one is on vacation, attending a convention is not usually an activity one would take but I wanted to attend this event when I noticed it yesterday, and an opportunity happened to open for me to attend. I had a great time walking through the exhibit hall and seeing how many businesses are involved with assisting Laos to move to a digital government with three pillars of Government, Economic, and Social. I saw vendors providing video conferencing options that are on-premises verses in the cloud to allow more control over data. (Not totally necessary as the cloud providers partition data to prevent spillage, but a nice option.) There were others presenting HR Solutions for paying staff in different currencies to facilitate importing staff with needed skills when required. Other services provided included electrical distribution and remote meter reading, network and device providers, vending, IoT, cashless payments, Government Services, etc.
One of the things that really got me excited was to see Maker Box. Maker Box is a makerspace in Vientiane, which is encouraging people to learn more about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), through hands on learning. They are supporting startup businesses, with one of the first being an electric bike company and a remote farming monitoring system. In their booth, they showed off a few things that have been made in the Makerspace, including a prototype prosthetic arm, weather monitoring station for farming, a machine for taking plastic water bottles to turning them into 3D filament, and a game to help learn typing.
