Euroalert.net will participate in FICOD 2009 in one of the panels on open government

10,000 attendees, nearly 200 journalists and bloggers, 45 workshops, 28 roundtables, 9 plenary sessions, one Hollywood star ... and we are proud to announce that Euroalert.net will participate in the roundtable on re-use of public sector information (PSI).

The third edition of the International Forum of Digital Contents, FICOD 2009, is coming soon. The 17, 18 and 19 November, the Congress Hall Juan Carlos I in Madrid will be the focus of the present digital content industry in Spanish language, and will have U.S.A., world leader in the industry, as a invited country.

Many media have echoed that Kevin Spacey will present at the inaugural keynote The social network, his biopic about the three founders of the most popular social network of the moment, Facebook. However, for us, the news is that Euroalert will be in FICOD to share its experience adding value through the re-use of the EU public information that you know so well: tenders and public procurement contracts and project funding opportunities.

José Luis Marín, our CEO, will be among the speakers at the roundtable "O-gov: creating value through the reuse of public sector information" which will be held on November 19 at 15.30 in Room 1, and which will undoubtedly contribute to the work that Aporta project began last year. The interim panel includes in this same table Chris Corbin, from ePSI Platform and Javier Hernandez-Ros, European Commission, among others. And there, we will explain how Euroalert.net has adapted its business model, which was documented as a case study in the book "Web 2.0: The Business Model", with a great deal of technological innovation to exploit new opportunities of the Internet: to contribute value to public information for all our readers, customers and subscribers, and then it is reused again in their own websites automatically through our widgets.

With the boost of the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Information Society of the spanish Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, FICOD born in 2007 to promote the products and services from digital contents industry and as to enable the exchange of good practices and experiences among attendees. Red.es is responsible for organizing this great event, framed and funded within the Avanza2 Plan for the Development of Information Society and Knowledge.

Professionals coming from sectors as diverse as television, music, publishing, film, videogames, websites and online publications, online training and many other come together each year in FICOD, their meeting point. For that reason and because of you, the Euroalert community, that make Euroalert possible, we are honoured to be among the protagonists of this year.

We will keep on informing you about our participation in FICOD, but for now remember that you have an appointment with us on November 19! Registration is free and the provisional agenda is available from the website of FICOD.

Innovation, a very sexy thing...

Here we are. The Euroalert.net crowd is already in Brussels is prepared to tell you first hand what happens in OPEN DAYS 2009. And we start from the Charlemagne building, where the Open Days University is being held. Here, we find Pregen Gregersen's conference Danish Enterprise and Construction Authority, of the Ministry of Economic and Business Affairs.



Gregersen has focused his speech, entitled "Restoring growth through innovation", on a shocking sentence: "Innovation is a very sexy thing...". And it's sexy because it can bring many benefits to societies. He has insisted that, fortunately, and despite the recession, the EU structural funds assigned to innovation is a huge amoint, but he says that the key is focusing these resources and apply the results through an efficient regional policy.

Gregersen has not forgotten something that we have always supported from Euroalert.net: new technologies are important for development, but they are not everything. Strengthen the basis, facilitate the dissemination and understanding of these new technologies, foster innovation, investment in human capital and encourage entrepreneurship are key to get a general growth in the European Union from the lowest levels: the regions.

We are glad to see that we are not the only who bet on open knowledge as a way to share progress and growth. And innovation, of course, is part of the knowledge that no one should stop sharing.