Located in the auditorium of the Ministry of Commerce on Tuesday, Indonesia’s Minister of Trade, Mari Elka Pangestu and IDBYTE Chairwoman Shinta Dhanuwardoyo in press conference announced IDBYTE as Indonesia Digital Expo, claimed to be the biggest event in July. This event will be an excellent meeting of marketers, developers, talents, technology vendors, agencies and the general public to discuss and get the latest information about the digital industry, both globally and locally.

The series of events will be held on July 11 to 14 at Pacific Place, Jakarta, where the event will consist of conferences, workshops, exhibitions and Bubu Awards. In this event, IDBYTE will invite a number of prominent speakers and judges of the famous Silicon Valley company. For information, this is the implementation of the seventh Bubu Award since it was first held in 2001.

Mari Elka Pangestu as a representative of the government, in her press release, said, “Activities undertaken by IDBYTE is a real form in developing creative industries in Indonesia, in this case, the digital industry. Therefore, of course, the government, through the Ministry of Commerce supports this positive activities.” Furthermore, she also added in a press conference that the advantages of digital Indonesian society is in their creativity and community. This makes her sure that Indonesia can compete with other countries in this field, including competing with China and India.

Furthermore, on the role of IDBYTE to advance the digital industry on Indonesia, Shinta Dhanuwardoyo added that they wanted to put Indonesia as one of the major players in the global digital map. Of course, with this award are expected to Indonesian talents will be lifted and known internationally as well as become the inspiration to the domestic industry players.

IDBYTE 2011 will give away Bubu Awards which are divided into four main categories, namely the Digital Campaign Award, Web Award, Mobile App Award and Digital Talents Award. Nominees will be selected by a panel of judges who are competent in their fields, namely Julian Persaud (Managing Director, Google Southeast Asia), Michel Mommejat (Regional Network Development Director, Wunderman Asia), Sutanto Hartono (President Director, PT Microsoft Indonesia), Erik Meijer (Vice President Director, PT Bakrie Telecom) and Betty Alisjahbana (QB International, previously had been President Director of PT IBM Indonesia).

For the conference itself will presenting Michelle Guthrie (JAPAC Director, Strategic Business Development, Google), Javier Olivan (Head of International Growth, Facebook), Arvind Rajan (Vice President, International, LinkedIn), Yvonne Chang (Vice President and Managing Director, Yahoo! Southeast Asia) and Herman Kertajaya (President, MarkPlus Inc.), and David Armano (Senior Vice President, Digital, Edelman), but for Armano IDBYTE is still trying to confirm the possibility of him as speaker.

Included in the IDBYTE series of events is a three-day workshop with several topics that become the main focus which are on Mobile Technology, Social Media, E-Commerce and Online Measurement & Analytics; Roadshow will also be held to 15 universities in Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta and Surabaya from mid May. For this Roadshow activities, IDBYTE will be in collaboration with FreSh in Jakarta, FOWAB in Bandung, Bancakan in Yogyakarta and suWec in Surabaya.

Yansen Kamto, Executive Director of IDBYTE in his presentation mentioned a number of interesting facts about the growth of Internet users in Indonesia. According to data predicted by the Business Monitor International, mentioned that in 2014 estimated there will be 153 million Internet users in Indonesia. That means in that year there are about 61% of the total population of Indonesia using the Internet.

Especially for E-Commerce, there are no exact numbers on how many transactions that generated, but certainly in time the portion of online purchases will continue to rise. Currently one of the constraints of E-Commerce in Indonesia is on the payment system, where purchases are still a lot served by banking transfer method, so it is still referred to as “semi-E-Commerce” but in the future is expected to have more solutions.

Nielsen global survey stated that for Indonesia itself found 70% of Internet users are doing online shopping, where even a quarter of them are willing to allocate 10% of monthly expenditure budget for online shopping activities.

These facts must not be underestimated. The emergence of local startups with a various contents and technology used is an indication of Indonesia as a player in this industry. Let us support so that we can be a host in our own country and can contribute to improve the economy of Indonesia.

Disclosure: DailySocial is a media partner of this event.

Translated by Nita Sellya.