— Posted by the Digital Agenda Going Local team for Portugal

Portuguese version below

An important aspect of the 2011 edition was the “really local” aspect of it. DAE Going local 2011 in Portugal consisted of several meetings over 3 days in four cities: Porto, Aveiro, Coimbra and Lisbon. The meetings were very well attended (more than 250 people joined us!), and they provided opportunities of lively interaction, which was very much appreciated by the organizers and participants.

Other than representatives from national authorities, the European Commission met, heard from, and discussed with people from universities, companies, and institutions at a local and regional level involved in various field of ICT: software, health applications, broadband, etc.

The full programme, videos from the meetings, presentation slides, links and etc., are available here, under each Meeting place; including an overview presentation about DAE’s status and progress in Portugal provided by Luis Magalhães, Portuguese Representative of the Digital Agenda High-Level Group.  

Read the full entry

Number of views: 1097

— Posted by Bjoern Juretzki, DG INFSO, Project Officer in the Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics unit

The first ever European Robotics Week was held from November 28 to December 4, 2011.  More than 130 organisations (companies, universities, research institutes) in 19 European countries organised over 360 robotics related activities. About 80,000 people visited the various events and exhibitions throughout Europe, many of them high school students and elementary school pupils. 

The events featured many opportunities for the public, particularly school kids, to have hands on interactions with robots in an educational or public setting. From shaking hands with a robot to robotics competitions, school visits, open lab tours, exhibitions … – there were many great activities!

One key event of the European Robotics Week was the Robotville Festival in the London Science Museum where more than 20 unique robots were on display. Visitors were able to interact with the robots and ask their makers all questions that were preying on their minds. Read the full entry

Number of views: 1167

— posted by Luis Rodriguez-Rosello, Member of  the Going Local Team for Slovakia

Digitálna agenda prichádza po druhý krát na Slovensko, a to 25. novembra 2011 v rámci iniciatívy Digital Agenda Going Local. Zástupcovia Európskej komisie plánujú diskutovať o dnešnom stave informačnej spoločnosti a informačných a komunikačných technológií so zástupcami štátnych a verejných inštitúcií, ako aj zástupcami širšej odbornej verejnosti.

Kľúčové témy zahrňujú aktuálne témy ako eSlužby – verejné služby ako eVláda, eZdravotníctvo, eZručnosti, eInklúzia, rozvoj širokopásmového prístupu, nástroj Connecting Europe Facility (Prepájame Európu-CEF), ako aj výskum a inovácie. Dôležitou súčasťou akcie je otvorená mini-konferencia  o príležitostiach a perspektívach vo výskume a inovácii, ktorá zahrnie aj témy ako Horizont 2020 a CEF.

Tešíme sa na Vašu účasť a na inšpiratívnu výmenu názorov a informácií tento piatok.

Simultánne tlmočenie je zabezpečené.

‘Pre Dalšie informa’cie: Digital Agenda, Going Local to Slovakia a ICT Research FP7. Twitter: #digitalagenda, #daelocal_sk

Number of views: 1309

— Posted by Wolfgang Boch, DG INFSO, Head of unit: Future and Emerging Technologies – Proactive

A chance to look into the future?

How you can analyse vast amounts of data and complex situations to predict natural disasters, or manage and respond to man-made disasters that cross national borders or continents.

Choosing a material that has led to a Nobel-prize in physics?

Graphene is a new material developed by atomic and molecular scale manipulation that could replace silicon as the wonder material of the 21st century.

Recognise environmental threats and dangerous situations with zero power?

Tiny devices without batteries that act like autonomous personal assistants, which can sense, compute and communicate – even while travelling through your bloodstream.

Simulate the complete human brain or let’s just say „neurorobotics”?

Understanding the way in which the human brain works can bring the benefits of brain-related or brain-inspired developments to computing architectures, neuroscience and medicine.

Read the full entry

Number of views: 2280

Posted by Wout van Wijk, DG INFSO, Project Officer ‘Trust and Security’

For a fruitful implementation of the Digital Agenda for Europe’s pillar on Research and Innovation, we are dependent on a strong and unified ICT scientific society. The following study provides the necessary tools to build one. 

The final report of the study: “The Role and Impact of Professional and Scientific Societies in ICT Research, Education and Innovation”(1) is available online.

Summary:

The study examines the current situation and the dynamics of the ICT societies in Europe, and proposes strategies to help overcome ICT society fragmentation, increasingly seen as a major bottleneck to their future development and their impact on research, innovation and policy-making. The study also created and developed an online inventory describing 442 societies throughout Europe to be used as a reference tool. Read the full entry

Number of views: 929

— Posted by Prof. Luciano Floridi, Research Chair in Philosophy of Information and GPI, University of Hertfordshire; Faculty of Philosophy and IEG, University of Oxford; UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics.

Nanotechnology, the Internet of Things, Web 2.0, Semantic Web, Cloud computing, motion-capturing games, smart phones apps, GPS, Augmented Reality, Artificial Companions, drones… is there a unifying perspective from which all these ICT phenomena might be interpreted as aspects of a single, macroscopic trend?

Part of the difficulty, in answering this question, is that we are still used to looking at ICTs as tools to interact with the world, when in fact they have become environmental forces, which are creating and shaping our reality, more and more pervasively. To put it briefly, the answer may lie in realising that ICTs are enveloping the world. In robotics, an envelope (also known as reach envelop) is the three-dimensional space that defines the boundaries that the robot can reach.

Read the full entry

Number of views: 2062

—  Posted by Javier Hernández-Ros, DG INFSO, Head of unit: Cultural Heritage and Technology Enhanced Learning

Last week, DG INFSO has made the Second progress report on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and on digital preservation in the European Union publicly available, providing a useful overview of both projects and issues in European digitisation.

In March I attended the launch of PrestoCentre a non profit organisation led by five of the major audiovisual archives organisations in Europe to facilitate the digitisation and preservation of our audiovisual collections across Europe. PrestoCentre is the result of more than 10 years of collaborative work under our IST research and innovation programmes of the leading archives in Europe: Institut National de l’Audivisuel (INA – FR) , Sound and Vision (Beeld en Geluid – NL), BBC (UK), RAI (IT) and ORF (A). Read the full entry

Number of views: 1003