Euroalert.net meets International Trade at IMEX 2011

Among the activities our Team has prepared for this month, for whom we will give you some more details in the coming days, Euroalert.net will be on May 11th at the Madrid «Fair for International Business and Investment IMEX 2011», one more opportunity for us to meet institutions and businesses who develop their activity in the field of International Trade.

As you already know Euroalert.net has taken the challenge to build up the most complete pan-European platform aggregating information on all public contracts in the European Union which will help us to provide value services for SMEs. Our services and tools on EU Government contracts information are already being used by institutions and companies in many countries in order to improve their results in the public procurement sector outside their home countries, developing their export strategies and Internationalization Plans.

Among the institutions who already trust Euroalert.net to help their companies to export their products and services to foreign countries, there are organizations such as the Irish Trade and Technology Agency Enterprise Ireland, the London Chamber of Commerce or the Export or the International Promotion Agency for Spanish Madrid region PromoMadrid.

We are sure that this will be a perfect occasion for us to meet institutions and companies willing to improve their market intelligence focused in export activities thanks to Euroalert.net information products and services.

If you are in Madrid in May 11th and have the opportunity to stop in IMEX 2011, you can contact us either by e-mail or via Twitter as the Head of Euroalert.net International Department, Mai Rodriguez Entem, will be there all that day and will be pleased to meet you and chat about how Euroalert.net can help you to export.

IMEX 2011 will also run on May 12th, so if you are close to Madrid Municipal Conference Centre, don't forget: you have an appointment with International Trade!

Euroalert experience at the Open Data networking session at SICARM

SICARM 2011 event held in Murcia, closed last Friday with a session on Open Data: "The commercial reuse of public sector information: a new business opportunity for companies and funding opportunity for government against the crisis?”.

As we anticipated last week, Euroalert participated in this session, explaining its experience regarding reusing data administrations, both good and bad, and also showing some examples of the services Euroalert provide to companies and organizations throughout Europe.

We had a very interesting morning because we all learned many things about different aspects involved in the reuse of public sector information. Jose Manuel Alonso from CTIC Foundation, and professors Emilio Guichot Reina and Manuel Fernández Salmerón provided interesting information from the different angles of their respective areas of expertise. In order to know of what we are talking about, you can have a look to the Euroalert presentation paper, as well as CTIC Foundation presentation which explains the current state of play with regard to Open Data and the roundtable on the videos posted on the SICARM website.

Information Services Based on Reuse of Public Sector Information

Also, you can find more details regarding this event on the Jose L. Marín blog. We want to thank to everyone who came to the University of Murcia for its presence and to those who followed it through the Internet or Twitter.

Euroalert will participate in “SICARM 2011” event at Murcia Region

Euroalert.net keeps participating on events in which we can share experiences and learning to improve and to offer a better service. This week, we will travel to Murcia (Spain). There, it takes place the “XI Foro Anual Sociedad Información” «Information Society XI Annual Forum» and our director, José Luis Marín, will be one of the speakers in one of the panels in which he will describe how Euroalert uses opendata to offer more and better commercial intelligence services to companies from all over Europe adding an extra value to the information from the public sector.

«Information Society XI Annual Forum» has as its theme this year «The legal challenges of technological innovation in public administration». These workshops aim to "explore the legal implications of process innovation and openness that is demanded to the Public Administration by the society, so that satisfactorily meet the constitutional mandate to serve the general interest in accordance with the requirements and possibilities that technology offers to give effect to the principles of effectiveness, efficiency and participation because it has not yet been raised in an open debate about the enormous possibilities of modernization and, above all, innovation enabling tools available today".

There will also be in SICARM 2011, other great speakers, experts in the reuse of public sector information, as are many of the players in the Open Data community in Spain. These are some of the participants in this Forum, which we will have the honor to share the event:

• Fernando de Pablo, General Director for the Promotion of Electronic Administration of the Ministry of the Presidency. he called his speech: "Is it possible a new model of public administration based on innovation and technology?"
• Lorenzo Cotino Hueso, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Valencia and Coordinator for ICT Network Law. His presentation will focus on "Legal and institutional problems of the Open Government".
• José Manuel Alonso, from the CTIC Foundation who will speak on "The reuse of the public information in Spain: current status and future prospects" and that will be in our same workshop.

In addition, there will be many other speakers that may be of interest for your activities so we recommend you to review the complete program of SICARM 2011.

If you are interested in learning more about this topic and you are in Murcia between 13 and 15 April, you can still register using this form. Moreover, registration is free. In concrete, presentations and workshops will be held in the Auditorium and Congress Centre of Murcia, 13 and 14 April and 15 April at the University of Murcia, Campus La Merced. Euroalert will participate on April 15 so if you want to meet us in person or more details on any of Euroalert's services do not hesitate to send us a mail or send us a DM via Twitter. See you there!

Euroalert.net lends an Ear to Europe!

Over the past nearly 4 years, Euroalert.net Official Blog has been one of the channels where we have been telling you all the news and developments related to our business and services, which go beyond the daily track of EU news and activities. It has also been the way for you to give us your feedback about these changes, which has been indeed of quite a help for us. It is easy to follow Euroalert.net's evolution over this time in its Blog, as it has been the channel to announce new features in our services – widgets, public procurement and government contracts alerting services, on-line store, etc.; the launch of new sections with more contents in our web – such as EU Law, or commercial opportunities and public procurement in multilateral organizations, etc.; Euroalert.net's mentions in the press, or Euroalert.net's participation in open data events where we have been contributing with our experiences in re-using public sector information.

However, no announcement has made us more excited as the one we are bringing you today: Macarena Rodríguez, from La Oreja de Europa, will join us as new Euroalert.net Editor in Chief from 1 April!

As Macarena needs no introduction among all followers of European Union matters, let us just tell you that she is coming with a bag full of new projects and new energy to bring you every day all the most relevant contents about the day-to-day activity of the European Union and its institutions.

We are sure that her contribution to Euroalert.net's Team will make it an even more useful site for all of you, and will also allow us to move faster in our goal to build the first pan-European platform to aggregate public procurement and tenders from the 27 Member States in the European Union.

La Oreja de Europa ("Europe's Ear") will of course keep on listening to Europe, and will not disappear or be part of Euroalert.net corporation. It will remain a personal project run by Macarena Rodríguez, who will keep on devoting as much effort as before to create a space for reflection and opinion on EU issues. Euroalert.net, will of course be very happy it remains so.

Welcome to Euroalert.net Team, Macarena!

Euroalert.net has a brand new look!

Throughout the last weekend we have been publishing the new versions of the different websites which make Euroalert.net. The main change you will perceive is the new look of all sections of Euroalert.net, whose main objective is to improve the overall clarity in the presentation of these contents.

We really hope you will like these changes but, above all, what we really hope to have achieved is our goal to improve the presentation and allow you to better read the contents on the most relevant news about the European Union that we publish every day. As always, your feedback is very much appreciated, so send us all your comments and opinions through Euroalert.net twitter channel!

A few weeks ago we already announced the launch of a new Public procurement alerting service, a service that you can also try and test for your business thanks to the 7-day free trial you can get by registering in Euroalert.net website. This alerting system is one of the services that will make up the wide range of products and services Euroalert.net will be launching during 2011 as part or its strategy to become the first pan-European platform to aggregate all public tenders and public procurement contracts in the European Union.

Following this same trend to create business services based on public sector information, Euroalert.net has also launched over the last months the service to provide customized newsletters on European information, as well as the new section on European Union legislation, where for the moment you will find the legal provisions published in the L Series of the OJEU, but that will be expanded very soon.

In the coming weeks you will be noticing more changes as more new features will be added in order to improve the content we offer you every day as well as the services we provide based on this information. But, before anything else, we will be making the announcement you are all waiting for, the name of the person who will be the new Euroalert.net Chief Editor from 1 April...

Come and take a 7-day FREE TRIAL for Euroalert.net 10ders Alerts

In our first post of this year we already mentioned you a new product we had included in Euroalert.net's on-line Store to close the year on a high note: the Alerts on public procurement contracts from all EU countries which we called 10ders Alerts. To make a good start of this new year, Euroalert.net offers you the possibility to enjoy a 7 days free trial by only making a very simple registration and to setting up your profile. During 7 days you will receive in your e-mail public procurement announcements marching your business needs.

As it has been the case for all 10ders products, we have created 10ders Alerts thinking very specially about what SMEs from all over Europe actually need and which are their difficulties in accessing public procurement market. For that reason, our main purpose was to create a service very easy to use, which can be bought at a very competitive price (only 20€/month or 192€/year), but, above all, a service including all the new features we have developed to enhance search power and filtering so you will only receive public contracts, procurement announcements and awards which are relevant for your business.


You are welcome to try it for FREE and give us your opinion, which will certainly help us to improve the product for all Euroalert.net Community. As always, for any question, just don't hesitate to contact us, you can do so in our e-mail TenderAlerts@euroalert.net.

Just like the 10ders Product Reports in public procurement, that you can also buy in Euroalert.net on-line store, this is one more excellent tool for exporting SMEs. Using 10ders Alerts they will be able to explore new business opportunities with the Public Sector in different countries, or to improve their commercial market intelligence and know what their competitors are doing, find new partners or distributors, or knowing whether their product is competitive outside their country.

10ders Alerts is the first of a series of important announcements we will be making in the coming weeks, and is one more step in our goal to build a pan-European platform which will aggregate all public procurement and tender announcements in the European Union (which represent more that 2155 billion euro!).

As we progress in this objective, we will be able to develop new cost-effective information services which will be accessible for any SME and will help them to be more competitive in public procurement markets.

For example, very soon we will be announcing you something we are really looking forward to making public: the entry of a new member of Euroalert.net Team, who will take the position as Editor in Chief and will therefore be in charge of offering you an even better selection of the most relevant news from the European Union and its institutions.

First (tender) announcement of the year... in Euroalert.net

2010 has been such a busy year for Euroalert.net that we didn't even realize to wish you all a Merry Christmas or to publish the traditional end-of-the-year post listing all the achievements and highlights of the last twelve months... Those of you who also follow Euroalert.net Twitter account of joined our Facebook page have already received our Christmas greetings, but for all who don't here the best wishes for year 2011 from all the Team who makes Euroalert.net, we hope it will be a year full of good projects and new opportunities for all of you.

The truth is that this year, in addition to Euroalert.net's usual activity which brings you every day all the information on EU News, funding opportunities and EU grants as well as government contracts and public procurement in the Union, we have started offering a daily update on the legislation published by the Official Journal of the European Union, and we have also inaugurated the new Euroalert.net on-line store.

But 2010 has been above all THE year for Open Data, a year which brought us the occasion to take part in all the events for open data community we managed to attend, even opening some of the data related to public procurement which are managed by Euroalert.net and releasing them in our project ShowMeTheTenders.net; a year in which we were also honoured to be one of the cases of PSI reuse to be mentioned by some of the most relevant Spanish media such as El País, Expansión or Cinco Días. This year Euroalert.net also contributed to Commission's public consultation on PSI Directive, as well as the consultation launched by the Spanish Ministry of Industry on the PSI-reuse Royal Decree. We are sure that all these common efforts will lead to a more favourable Open Data legislation quite soon.

This is not going to be a the detailed count of all 2010 achievements, not at all..., but just as an example of Euroalert.net activity over the past months, on 30 December - almost closing up the year, we launched the new tailored alerting service on public procurement 10ders Alerts - more details will follow in another post. This new service, together with some more in the pipeline, will complete over 2011 the most comprehensive tool kit of information services to help SMEs to access public procurement and government contracts.

In some countries there used to be some sort of traditional expectation about which would be the first TV commercial of the new year... as a “tender version” of such tradition, here comes the first announcement - tender announcement of course..., of year 2011: those interested in multilateral tendering, at your marks, first announcement of year 2011 is a EuropeAid forecast for a contract to provide support to the Kosovo Judicial/ Prosecutorial Council under funded an IPA instrument.

Happy 2011 to every one and good luck to all those bidding this year!!!