On December 7^{th 2018,} the European Commision presented a coordinated plan prepared with Members States to foster the development and use of AI in Europe. This plan, that delivers on the European AI Strategy adopted last April 2018, proposes joint actions in four areas: increasing investment, making more data available, fostering talent and ensuring trust.

The European Commission and the Big Data Value Association (BDVA) organised last November 7^th a Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) Working Group meeting on Big Data and AI in Brussels. This meeting focused on exploring how Digital Innovation Hubs can help boost the uptake of this technology by SMEs and contribute to the European data economy. You can find out more about the outcomes of the meeting here.

At the ICT conference in Vienna on 5 December 2018,  the Big Data Value Association and the euRobotics Association signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the goal of increasing collaboration to boost AI progress in Europe.

The European associations for Big Data Value (www.BDVA.eu) and HPC (www.ETP4HPC.eu) have recently published a joint paper, discussing current strengths and differences between the (software and hardware) stacks of BDC and HPC, and how the current strengths of one stack may address a shortcoming/need in the other stack.

The Big Data Value Association held its General Assembly on November 14^th 2018, in Vienna, in the context of the European Big Data Value Forum event. As part of the meeting, the BDVA members were called to elect over two-thirds of the members of its Board of Directors, and to elect a President and one Vice-President.

The BDVA i-Spaces group organized, in the context of the European Big Data Value Forum 2018 (Vienna, 14^th November) the workshop “Shaping the European Big Data landscape: from i-Spaces and Centres of Excellence to Big Data Digital Innovation Hubs”.

Great sucess of European Big Data Value Forum 2018! From BDVA, we want to thank the European Commission, the Austrian Presidency of the Council of the European Union and the rest of the organizers, the speakers and participants in panel and sessions, the sponsors and the Big Data and AI community, who attended the event, for their great support and contribution in making a big success of this event. We look forward to seeing you all in Finland next year!

On the 14^th of November 2018, the BDVA General Assembly officially welcomed 16 new members, among which there are 8 Full Members and 8 Associate Members. 5 members are Industry-SMEs. New members come from 11 different countries: Austria, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, UK.