Taking notes at The Single Market Opportunity event

On January 24 we were lucky enough to attend The Single Market Opportunity event that Google organized in Brussels to discuss the opportunities that a single market presents and the barriers that still exist in the single European market. As you know, Euroalert aggregates public tenders published by the EU countries with the aim that the opportunities in public procurement of the single market can be better used by small and medium enterprises. Thus, it was very interesting to us to attend to all discussions held at the Google's event.

Of course, the discussion focused on the advances that have taken place in recent years due to the firm commitment of the European Commission for improving SMEs competitiveness through the opportunities of the Single Market. However, it was also extensively discussed the major barriers that still exist, from the tax system to heterogeneous linguistic diversity, for a European market in which nearly 500 million people live, (data from 1 January 2009) to become a reality.

It was very inspiring to see the experience of the small businesses that Google invited to the event, which share how they have taken advantage of the opportunities offered by Internet and the online marketing to internationalise their services and to access to a larger market. We are sure that it would be more and more companies using existing resources in technology and legislative developments to break down barriers and generate growth. Euroalert will keep working for helping to better enable European SMEs to improve their competitive intelligence in the Single Market with Euroalert's products such as, the Alerts on Government contracts in the European Union and the List of Government Contracts Winners in the EU.

Euroalert presents its experience at the Open Software World Conference 2012 and the W3C Day in Spain

Marc Garriga at the OSWC 2012

Last week, Euroalert experienced in Granada a few intense days during the celebration of the Open Software World Conference 2012 (OSWC2012), which it is organised every year by the Andalusian Regional Government in collaboration with the CENATIC and the Regional Government of Extremadura. It was intense because we had the opportunity to present our experience on two Open Data events, held during those days with very different approaches. In both events, we explain how we collect the data that we use as raw material for our business intelligence products based on a public procurement analysis.

On January 12, Euroalert participated in the W3C Day in Spain, to which we were invited by our friends from the W3C Spain Office – office which as you know is hosted by CTIC Foundation. Following a presentation on the OpenData initiative from the Andalusian Regional Government given by Cristina Puente, Carlos de la Fuente moderated a panel discussion which was provocatively entitled as follows "PSI re-use... is there anyone there?". On this panel, we could offer our views on issues such as the Spanish Royal Decree 1495/2011, the need for a transparency regulation or PSI re-use business characterization. Additionally to the consensus reached on the need to publish much more data, the main conclusion was the need to give some further steps to consolidate the Community Open Data in Spain. Euroalert certainly tries to contribute as much as possible to this aim. On the panel, we were accompanied by Emilio Garcia, from the Finance and Public Administration Ministry, Jorge Campanillas, from Iurismatica company, Alberto Ortiz from Open Data Euskadi and María Jesús Fernández, from Open Data Zaragoza. On the hashtag #diaw3c, there is much information on what it was said there.

On the other hand, on January 13 we contribute with our experience to the debate that was proposed in the "OpenData, an opportunity for business and competitiveness" panel, organised by the OSWC2012. The panel discussion was about the business opportunities that exist concerning the re-use of public sector information. It was moderated by Guzmán Garmendia, General Director of Open Government and New Technologies department from the Government of Navarre, and it was at the discussion Jose Antonio Recio from Fundecyt, Jesus María Alonso from AtoS and Marc Garriga, from the Barcelona City Council. The debate focused around the potential of public data to generate wealth and such as Guzmán Garmendia and Marc Garriga highlighted, the importance of the joint work of public administrations that release data and companies that intend to re-use them.

Throughout the conference we had the opportunity to talk with many members of the Spanish Open Data Community, and we were very proud to participate in the meeting organised by Open Data Sevilla. We were also kindly invited to bring our vision to this newborn group of proactive citizens in the development of open data initiatives, and we enjoyed the occasion to wish them all the luck in doing this work, which will benefit everyone.

In addition to the Euroalert photo album in the OSWC 2012, we want to share with all of you as usually, both presentation that we used in the Open Software World Conference:

Adding public procurement data to create value for SMEs

and the one we used on the W3C Day in Spain:

How does Euroalert use Spanish Open Data portals?

The Euroalert Community expands to Google+

In addition to wish you a happy and great 2012, we want to start sharing with you our new Euroalert's Google+ page. This page has been created to provide a new place to share our contents and for the conversation among the Euroalert Community members. If you add Euroalert page to your Google+ circles, you can make comments to the most significant contents provided by Euroalert. Of course, you can keep doing +1 to any content we publish and you liked or that have been useful for you.

Likely you are already part of one of the platforms and services that we use to enable to the Euroalert Community members a direct way to enjoy our contents. However, we will use this post to summarize all the services where you can find our contents completely for free. For example, more than 2200 users are already following Euroalert.net content concerning the European Union in both English and Spanish via Twitter. If you decide to follow Euroalert on Twitter, you will be able to find the latest news about the EU, the EU grants to finance projects and information on relevant public contracts and tenders. In other words, you will enjoy a small sample of the free contents published on the Euroalert website and included in more advanced products and services that you can find in our online store.

If you use other social networks like Facebook, Euroalert has also a page there and you can always contact us through this page, and through Euroalert page on Linkedin. Our team is available to receive your comments and suggestions through these channels in addition to other more traditional ways such as our e-mail.

On the other hand we also want to remind you about Euroalert free newsletter, that is currently being sent to several thousand people every week, and in which we inform on the most significant up to date European content, EU grants and public contracts. Besides of course this blog, which has as main objective to keep you up to date on our product enhancements and our small achievements as a company. Through Euroalert's profile on SlideShare we share materials from all the events where we participate with the aim of contributing with our experience as a company. From Euroalert albums in Picasa you can download the photos that we have taken in our visits throughout Europe and that we provide to the whole Community.

We would like to know your opinion, as we are always listening to our users in order to figure out the best ways to improve our services, so you can enjoy all the content related to the EU that we provide to the Euroalert Community. By the way, just for those who are already part of our Community, you will enjoy special offers and promotions like the one that we have just launched. Inserting the EURLRT11 code, you are able to get a discount on public contracts alerts and on the customized newsletter on European information.