Will we soon have a European digital giant? How do you want the Internet to look like in 2030? Open vs closed? Centralised vs decentralised? Transparent vs private? Human-centric vs machine-centric?
Last autumn, the Commission launched the ambitious and open Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative. The Next Generation Internet is a broad and long-term initiative that will develop the Internet of 2025.
The Commission is calling for (young) researchers, start-ups, SMEs and social innovators to come together to push the development of these new internet technologies based on an agile and flexible program approach to shape the Internet of the future. Luxembourg has already taken a step forward in this initiative.
We asked Geraud Guilloud, European Funding Advisor at Luxinnovation and coordinator of the NGI 101 workshop in Luxembourg.
(Photo by Sebastien Gabriel on Unsplash)
What is the NGI initiative?
The Next Generation Internet initiative (NGI) is a large scale programme launched by the European Commission to build the Internet of 2025. This initiative will mobilise a large amount of funding for research, innovation and entrepreneurship targeting SMEs, start-ups, researchers and society associations. The aim is to structure and implement the different building blocks that will benefit the European today and future entrepreneurs. The Commission wants to build an European ecosystem that would untie the emergence of future European Giants.
How Luxembourg positions itself in this initiative?
Luxembourg is taking the lead in this initiative. Luxembourg will host the first NGI assembly in January 2018 and Prime Minister Bettel confirmed his attendance for this conference along European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Gabriel. The high level people are mobilising to make NGI a success in Luxembourg.
What do you expect from this event?
We expect to shape the NGI ecosystem in Luxembourg with the start-ups, entrepreneurs and SMEs. We want to create a Luxembourg NGI-ready ecosystem so that, when the funding and the opportunities will arrive as from 2018, we can get our industrial stakeholders and our best promising start-ups taking the lead in Europe. At the end of the workshop, the expected outcomes are : to have the awareness raised, to identify the most promising stakeholders, to have the embryon of a Luxembourg NGI community.
