May 15th, 2012
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— Posted by Christian Nielsen, ESN, Rapporteur to the European Commission at the Future Internet Assembly
In the large assembly hall behind the glowing ‘Hands-on FIRE’ demos, delegates received a warm welcome to the Aalborg Future Internet Assembly from, among others, Morten Østergaard, Danish Minister for Science, Innovation and Higher Education and Finn Kjærsdam, President of Aalborg University who outlined their vision of ‘Smart Cities and the Internet of Things’ (IoT).
“Smart systems create whole new fundamental infrastructure for our society with the internet at the centre – and there is unlimited potential,” said Minister Østergaard. But smart systems need smart people “who are fluent in digital language”.
Smart cities combine the latest technologies and data-driven trends with socially-conscious policies and actions to improve the quality of life of “smart citizens” who live in them. The Internet of Things and other Future Internet (FI) developments, including infrastructure, services, standards, “big data” and security assurances, pave the way for joined-up cities to evolve.
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May 14th, 2012
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— Posted by Katarzyna Gorgol & Kristiina Pietikainen, DG INFSO, Unit for Digital Agenda’s policy coordination
According to the Digital Agenda Scoreboard released last year, 56% of Europeans already buy online, 12% do it on a cross border level. When online, we look for goods and services which we can’t get offline or which are cheaper. We buy mainly electronic equipment, books and tourist services, household goods or clothes and accessories. When we decide not to buy online, it’s because we don’t trust the quality of the goods or services, we are concerned about our personal data or we face problems with paying
These findings are highlighted in the results of consultations on electronic commerce undertaken by the European Commission.
At the same time, the e-commerce reality is evolving at the speed of light. Every day new business models are being tested; new goods and services made available online. We still use the term “electronic commerce”, but new notions are on the horizon: mobile commerce or social commerce. Whatever the name or scope, e-commerce is a fundamental part of the digital economy and definitely merits the attention of the Digital Agenda Assembly 2012.
This year, we will focus on two key enablers to e-commerce: consumer trust and payments.
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May 7th, 2012
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— Posted by Silvia Andreescu, DG INFSO, Project Officer in the unit responsible for Nanoelectronics
Are you trying to start – up a business or already running your own company? Are you working in an SME or, on the contrary, in a big corporation? Are you a web-entrepreneur looking forward to help designing a web strategy? Would you, for example, like to have a Startup Europe Partnership based on the Based on Startup America initiative?
This is your chance to share your thoughts on what Europe should do to help businesses move forward and promote innovation.
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May 3rd, 2012
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— Posted by Paul Timmers, Director “ICT Addressing Societal Challenges” at DG INFSO
In what areas and how could EU action on social media benefit employability, jobs and growth across Europe?
These questions will be addressed during the Digital Agenda Assembly on 21 and 22 June in Brussels, more specifically in the workshop Social Media Social Networking for Economic Recovery, Jobs and Growth. We will explore the use and great potential of social media for growth and jobs in Europe from three perspectives:
1 - businesses;
2 - social media platform providers;
3 - the public sector.
We are interested in discovering successful European cases from which lessons can be learned, be it from the business usage of social media or web-entrepreneurs’ point of view.
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April 30th, 2012
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— Posted by Gerard de Graaf, Director “Audiovisual, Media, Internet” at DG INFSO
We would like to learn your views about accessing audiovisual content nowadays: Which innovations do you see emerging? Do you think there are enough legal possibilities to access content online? How can protection of consumers be ensured? What is the impact of convergence on media pluralism? How can we make most out of the opportunities to transfer content from one device to another? …
Content creation and consumption anytime, anywhere and on any device? Nowadays this is not an abstract vision anymore but a reality we see happening around us. Convergence brings along many opportunities for businesses and many new experiences for consumers. Devices and applications offer us new ways of enjoying content and sharing this experience with others. TV on the Internet or Internet on your TV screen – differences continue to blur and might totally fade away one day.
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April 26th, 2012
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— Posted by Miguel Gonzalez-Sancho, DG INFSO, & the team organising the Digital Agenda Assembly
You might already know that we have launched a new online engagement platform to collect feedback and ideas for the Digital Agenda Assembly 2012, which is going to take place in Brussels on 21 & 22 June.
Our goal is to collectively identify relevant evidence and inspiring stories in a series of policy actions which are relevant to the Digital Agenda for Europe. The top down part is that we have selected nine key topics this year: (1) converged media; (2) broadband; (3) e-commerce; (4) social media; (5) cloud; (6) data; (7) security; (8) innovation and entrepreneurship; (9) jobs and skills. Then, there is a discussion group (10) “other” where participants can to discuss issues Digital Agenda issues not covered by the 9 key topics mentioned. The bottom-up and horizontal part is that we count on as many people as possible to share ideas and inspiring stories.
“We could not make the Digital Agenda succeed without the active involvement of all those people who are out there and interested in making it happen”, said Neelie Kroes on her blog last Thursday.
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April 3rd, 2012
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— Posted by Heather Blanchard – GUEST CONTRIBUTOR - Social Entrepreneur sojourning as a 2012 Global Communications Masters Candidate at The American University of Paris
I was invited recently to participate and present at the European Commission’s Information Society and Media Directorate General – DG INFSO - seminar on Socio-Economic Assessment of the Benefits of Social Networks for Organisations – #euseasons. The seminar focused on three core areas which were: (1) to establish a better understanding of the benefits and challenges of social networking and social media technology to organisations; (2) to arrive at policy options in this area; and (3) to help catalyse take-up of collaborative platforms by European organisations. The seminar is part of a greater study by being lead by Joint Research Centre (Seville, Spain) in support of INFSO.
As any event goes, the discussion quickly focused down from the agenda to two key topics of conversation which percolated around the room. The first was how the Commission might change the way it engages in the future and the second was how the Commission may be able to champion (and support) web entrepreneurs to grow Europe’s digital marketplace.
It wasn’t long before a participant offered that, “You can’t engage externally with an expected social behaviour if you don’t have that internally.” This is a common challenge in large institutions. That while perhaps leaders may advocate for change, that indeed change is an elephant which moves very slowly across an organisation. It involves systemic reconstruction and even then an organisation is a system which is seeking to engage with an ecosystem which has become every more fluid. Ever more complex.
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March 28th, 2012
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— Posted by Paul Timmers, DG INFSO, Director “ICT for Societal Challenges”, & by Maria Iglesia Gomez, DG SANCO, Head of Unit “Innovation for Health and Consumers”
Everything is ready for the 3rd of April event “European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing: From Plan to Action“, a milestone for this pilot initiative that will enable more than 500 stakeholders to meet with each other, explain how they want to get involved and discover common interests.
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March 14th, 2012
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— Posted by Erastos Filos, DG INFSO, Coordinator Intelligent Manufacturing Systems/ICT for Factories of the Future
At a roundtable that I attended last week at CeBIT, European Commission’s Vice-President for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes discussed with four industry executives how Cloud Computing could impact manufacturing.
The chairman of the roundtable, Dr.Massimo Mattucci, head of the European Factories of the Future Research Association – EFFRA -, an industry-led body, opened the discussion by highlighting two open issues: firstly the technology readiness of clouds which is a crucial prerequisite for wide industrial deployment; secondly, some yet unsolved legal and security aspects of a Europe-wide cloud infrastructure that need to be settled beforehand.
Neelie Kroes‘ replied similarly to what she had declared earlier this year, at the World Economic Forum in Davos – WEF -, that Europe needs a Cloud partnership. “Europe has to become not only Cloud-friendly but Cloud-active“. She said: “I invite Europe’s manufacturing industry to join this partnership and to start embracing the technology“.
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