CULTURE and heritage are two invaluable assets of Penang*. In response to the lack of an integrated and comprehensive information on them, Sympologic Sdn Bhd in 2008 founded iGeorgeTown Penang, a multi-channel information platform to benefit (1) a wide audience including local and international travellers and mass media consumers and (2) the local economy especially the travel and hospitality, and arts industries.

OBJECTIVES

iGeorgeTown has the following objectives:

1. Be the privately-driven and primarily privately-funded platform of integrated and comprehensive information about George Town’s culture and heritage – for the use of local and visiting end-users as well as those in the information, travel and hospitality industries;
2. Lean on existing structures, develop win-win relationships among the various stakeholders in the heritage and related industries and be a networking platform for them;
3. Encourage civic pride by revisiting Penang’s place in history where peoples of age-old civilisations engaged each other and evolved rich and complex cultural practices;
4. Help the state by providing heritage tourism-related information as well as an informational map of all stakeholders in the industry;
5. Interprete culture in the larger context of economics, politics, the arts and popular entertainment; and
6. Help re-brand Penang as a global heritage and cultural centre

An important facet of this information platform is our web portal, www.igeorgetownpenang.com. It is Penang–centric and aims to connect our readers to daily updated news and links which highlight the state. It is targeted mainly at (i) the Penang diaspora (ii) local individuals and organisations interested in brief, all-round information (iii) others interested in Penang including visitors (past and prospective) and people from abroad who would like to have links with the state. 

iGT NetBuzz, our news digest, aggregates news from various sources and blogs on heritage, culture, food, business, politics, social issues, travel logs, etc. The site also has sections like iGT Photo and iGT Video (which aggregate pictures and videos from the Internet), a weekly news roundup, opinion pieces, news features and an events calendar. It also contains:

1. A major section on the George Town World Heritage Site
2. Links to various websites of interest to people who want to know more about Penang
3. A Facebook cause “Why George Town, Penang, needs our attention”
4. A twitter page
5. An e-newsletter, iGT Connect, which is sent out to registered users twice a month

OVERALL MANAGEMENT & COORDINATION
Overall management of the documentation, production and dissemination of information via the channels of iGeorgeTown is by Lim Siang Jin, with a team of main associates and his staff at Sympologic Sdn Bhd. The associates hail from a variety of backgrounds including academia, culture and heritage, technology, arts, the food industry, etc.

* The addition of George Town to UNESCO’s World Heritage List on July 7, 2008, has added new urgency for a multi-channel information platform. Among the heritage and culture destinations the world over, George Town stands out as a living “intercultural city” with a mix of practices that has evolved from the contact and engagement of peoples from Southeast Asia, the Far East, the Indian Subcontinent, Europe and the Middle East. We will adopt this “living intercultural city” concept as the main theme of this project.