By Albeiro Rodas – Picture from Campus Party Brazil

Colombia Passport. Campus Party is one of the biggest European LAN Party that recently conquered the Americas with its activities. A LAN Party is a big meeting of persons with their computers to play and share information and technology. It is realized every year gathering fans of technology from all Europe. This year Campus Party crossed the Atlantic first in Brazil by February and now in Colombia, a country that was not contemplated in the list, but the invitation of Telecom and the perspectives of a successful program in the second South American capital brought the Campus Party to the Andean nation.

Corferias, the traditional campus for expositions, congresses and seminars in Bogotá, is ready to receive visitors and locals to see the last in digital technology and its applications. The program has areas like astronomy, Software, Bots, developers and simulation.

Campus Party was an idea of EnRED, a youth group movement in Benalmádena, Spain that gathered fans of technology that organized their first “Ben-Al Party” in 1997. By 1998 was already known as Campus Party and had the attention of the mass media in all Spain. But after this 1998 version, EnRED abandoned the project due to some internal conflicts and Campus Party is taken by a new society, E3 Future, that would give the actual form and projection. E3 Future is officially founded in 1999 with Belinda Galiano as its first president and it received the support of several students of superior education in Spain. The Valladolid University in its department of informatic provided the coordination, levels and the creation of the Society of Online Players with the servers and competitions. The Sevilla University in its Faculty of Informatic with the GPUL Linux, made the configuration of the net, giving the technological support. Campus Party 2000 was done in Valencia and became in that year the biggest European event of this category for the number of participants connected online.

By Albeiro Rodas | Picture by Clara Campoamor.

Colombians are buying more computers, according to the statistics of the Ministry of Communications, Mrs Maria del Rosario Guerra in her annual report.

Sellings of computers and Internet services rose to 80% during 2007 and the numbers are a result of a new tax policy to technological equipment in Colombia given by Law 1111 of 27th December 2006.

The 2006 law canceled what is called in Colombia “IVA” (Valued Added Tax) that used to make computers expensive and unreachable for the common Colombian pocket. The measure applied for computers with costs inferior to US$ 900. As a consequence. many Colombian families, companies, schools and other organizations could afford to get a computer and get access to Internet during 2007.

Mrs Guerra said also that the stability of the Dollar against the Colombian Peso was also another factor to hold the prices and made computers more popular, but the percent does not reach yet the 100% of the Colombian families. It is needed another tax reform to make even more reachable technologies to the common of the people. Such legal measures would stop the global problem of illegal distribution of Softwares and facilitad to the people the access to education through the use of technologies.

Colombia, that is the third world Spanish-speaking nation after Mexico and Spain, still inferior in access to Internet. Computers are popular in the big cities like Bogotá, Medellín, Bucaramanga, Ibagué and Cali, among others, but still considered a luxury for popular sectors of the cities and rural areas.