Growth, jobs and more

My last speech during the Slovenian EU presidency at the European Sustainable Development Network Conference in Paris, June 30th-July 1st, 2008. Excellencies, ladies and gentleman, It is a real pleasure to be here in Paris on the last day of the Slovenian presidency of the EU. The European Sustainable Development Network is a valuable actor for promoting the kind of development that is future proof. The presence of highly ranking politicians from Slovenia and France demonstrates the importance we attach to your network. I am convinced that sooner or later the internal issues related to our institutional setting and the Lisbon Treaty will be behind us. My message here today will be focused on the importance of this network for the role that Europe needs to assume on the global stage. This role is to care [1]! In a complex world of today, there are fewer and fewer issues that are limited to one scientific discipline, one industrial sector or a single ministry and working across these b...

Empires stood (Roman) and fell (Napolen's adventure in Russia) with communications technology. Today we are building empires of the mind and we need communication technology more than ever. In fact Europe's global dominance started with the communication revolution that democratized paper. The 2nd communication revolution related to the Internet is democratizing electronic communication and inviting a new wave of talent into creative processes. As Florida put it, creativity is the ultimate economic resource and there is a war for talent going on out there. Technology is something that attracts talent, internet technology definitively. So the Slovenian presidency built a strong emphasis on creativity and internet into the updated Lisbon Strategy. IPv6 makes future growth of the Internet possible. This was in a nutshell the contents of my talk at the IPv6 launch event in Brussels on May 30th. I took my mobile phone with me to the podium and recorded the talk. A colleague synced i...

Some notes for the speech to the European University Business Forum in Brussels last week. Key messages: universities were designed for a paper based communication technology which is outdated; the prevailing position that the universities have had on education and research and their other functions is coming to an end; universities need to change; updated Lisbon strategy is sending some messages in this respect, but there is a limit to what politics can do; the change must be initiated from within the universities; for this they need more freedom, but also more competition and market orientation; universities should be less of an industrialized mechanism to crank out graduates and more of a community of teachers an students, shaping minds rather that transferring knowledge. Dear X, dear y, ladies and gentleman, It is a pleasure etc. etc. … I was lecturing design communication , how professionals communicate when they design and build....

Here are some slides from the talk I gave in Berlin in January . In summary: Communication revolutions change the way we live together. They change culture, innovation, technology and the political process. We are at the middle of the second communication revolution. Internet is unleashing the human potential, the creativity, and allows the participation of the masses. Governments should exploit this. Updated Lisbon strategy for growth and jobs is taking note. eGovernment 2.0 is about two way communication. Internet is platform for public debate, exchange of ideas and problem solving. Government services are a springboard for community made services. Government AND citizens, business jointly provide services, information. Government mediates, rather than rules. Not just G2x but also x2G and x2y.

One of the nice traditions of the Joint Technology Center of the European Commission is that they maintain "semesters" according to the schedule of the European Council presidencies. So the Slovenian semester started a few days ago. I was asked to take part at the kick-off of the Slovenian semester at Ispra, Italy and gladly accepted the invitation. Last but not least, my Faculty for Civil Engineering has an on-going and fruitful cooperation with the JRC's ELSA lab and was even able to meet some of my former students there. Of course there were a few speeches. Mine included. Below are the slides I made to use as talking points. Key message: Europe is about synergies among its parts. JRC's are a good example of that. | View | Upload your own

The "Lisbon Strategy" alias "the strategy for growth and jobs" is resulting in growth, does create jobs, but is not something that the Europeans would care about. I tried to run "lisbon strategy" through Google Trends and the result was: Your terms - "lisbon strategy" - do not have enough search volume to show graphs. Translation: nobody cares. Very few people know that the strategy sets targets such as investing 3% of GDP in R&D, that it calls for 70% employment, for 25% reduction in administrative burden or 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The strategy will be updated in spring 2008 under the Slovenian presidency. The discussions about the update started earlier this year. Portugal (as the current presidency) and Slovenia (as the next) established good cooperation. On Tuesday the Commission published its view on the past and future of the Strategy that is taking many of those discussions into account. As a very early adopte...