A call has been launched for Open Access Book Chapters on the topics of Data Platforms: Foundations, Design Space, and Deployments.

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before January 28th, 2021, a brief summary (abstract) consisting of title and 150-200 words clearly identifying the main objectives of your contribution and how it fits within the edited book.

Authors of accepted proposals will be notified in February 2021 about the status of their proposals and provided chapter formatting guidelines.

Chapter proposal must be submitted via EasyChair here.

For further information, please contact the editors on: edward.curry@nuigalway.ie 

On the 9th of December, the EUHubs4Data project officially launched its first open call for SMEs, start-ups and web entrepreneurs. The call aims at providing support to cross-border data driven experiments which leverage EUHubs4Data data and services catalogue.

If you have an idea for a data driven product or service and you are looking for financial and business support as well as visibility this call is for you! Do not hesitate to get in touch with bdva at info@core.bdva.eu in case of questions. More information are also available here.

The 11th of December marks the official launch of the TransContinuum Initiative or TCI.

BDVA is proud to participate, together with the ETP4HPC, ECSO, 5G IA, EU-MATHS-IN, CLAIRE, HiPEAC and AIOTI, in the launch of this initiative which aims at developing a vision for the digital continuum and collaborating to establish recommendations for European Research and Innovation funding programmes.

You can find the full press release for the launch of the initiative here and the vision statement here. 

If you have questions on this initiative do not hesitate to write to BDVA at info@core.bdva.eu.

BDVA organised an Activity Group Meeting (the last of 2020) on the 11th of December from 9h30 to 15h. The meeting was organised jointly with the BDV PPP Technical Committee (TC6) and gathered more than 100 participants, both BDVA Members and BDV PPP projects.

For more information on Activity Group meetings or BDVA activities in general do not hesitate to contact us at info@core.bdva.eu 

The European Commission recently launched a public consultation on Data sharing in the EU – common European data spaces. The purpose of this public consultation is to gather feedback on the Proposal for a Regulation on European Data Governance (Data Governance Act) which was adopted on the 25th of November. 

The publication consultation will stay open until the 1st of February and all documents and details concerning the consultation are available here.

BDVA welcomes the launch of this public consultation and strongly encourages all Members and Partners to shaire their views on the proposed Data Governance Act.

On the 26th of November, the BDVA General Assembly officially welcomed 15 new members, among which there are 5 Full Members and 10 Associate Members. The Assembly also confirmed the promotion of 2 Associate Members to Full Members.

New Full Members: Consorzio Intellimech, Dublin City University - ADAPT Centre, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Metaphacts, University of Twente, Digital Society Institute. 

New Associate Members: Asociación de Usuarios de Internet, Centre for Social Science, Consorzio Topix, Demos Research Institute oy, Eötvös Loránd University, Institut Mihajlo Pupin, MET Communications GmbH, Sestek, University of Szeged, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Associate Members becoming Full Members: Engie Lab Crigen, Teknopar

On the 25th of November, the European Commission officially released its Proposal for a Regulation on European Data Governance (so-called Data Governance Act). The proposal is the first of a set of measures announced in the 2020 European strategy for data and aims at fostering the availability of data for use by increasing trust in data intermediaries and by strengthening data-sharing mechanisms across the EU.

A summary of the measures included in the proposed regulation is available in this factsheet. The full text of the proposed Regulation can be found here and the text of the European Commission's press release here.

The Digital Around the World conference started on the 20th of October with a session on Technology for a Better World. BDVA President, Thomas Hahn - Siemens, was invited to join the opening panel and gave a speech on the new Partnership on AI, Data and Robotics. 

Mr. Hahn was also invited to participate in the session on Artificial Intelligence as enabler for competitiveness together with other keynote speakers such as Cecile Huet, Deputy Head of Unit at the European Commission in the AI and Robotics Unit of DG CNECT and Barry O'Sullivan, Chair of Constraint Programming, Department of Computer Science, University College Cork and former deputy president of EurAI. This session was organised and chaired by BDVA Director, Nuria de Lama, from Atos. 

The recordings of all sessions are available here.