Another successful edition of the Net Futures conference (Net Futures 2017) took place last June 28-29 in Brussels with a focus on "Internet, the economy and society in 2027".
The NET FUTURES edition 2017 was meant to serve as a wake-up call for policy makers and technologist alike, for civil society and the young whose future we will influence. Designed to place adeep-dive conversations and learnings right at a time when Europe is at the brink of entering the next industrial revolution: The Net. (Source: http://netfuturesconference.eu/).Data was at the centre of most of the speeches, presentations and workshops.

The BDVA General Assembly held in Brussels on June 21st officially admitted 27 new members: 

Last 21 June 2017, the European Forum for Manufacturing organised a Policy Dinner Debate on ‘Digitising European Industry, new models for manufacturing” held in the European Parliament, and chaired by MEP Reinhard BÜTIKOFER, Rapporteur and Member of the Industry, Research and Energy Committee, and. The event counted with the presence of Roberto VIOLA, Director General DG CNECT, European Commission.

Thomas Hahn, Head of corporate Technology Unit, Chief expert software and Industry 4.0 expert at Siemens, and, BDVA Vice-President, contributed to the debate, emphasizing the important role of BDVA and the Big Data Value PPP in contributing to this transformation, providing Data Innovation Recommendations, developing the European Big Data Ecosystem, guiding standards, and facilitating access to know-how and skills. 

The Big Data Value Association is working in defining Big Data Standardisation and interoperability priorities. The work is being developed by the BDVA Task Force 6 (Technical Priorities) and in particular by the Subgroup 6 (TG6-SG6 Standardisation priorities). As part of the work developed by TF6, BDVA has also defined a Big Data Value Reference model.

On June 20th, BDVA organises a workshop in Brussels to engage with other standardisation communities as an important step to create the roadmap for Big Data Standards harmonisation. Representatives from ETSI, AIOTI WG3, CEN/CENELEC, OASC, ISO/JTC1/WG9, W3C, OneM2M, Industry 4.0, the European Commission, some Big Data Value PPP projects, some verticals and other important players will be joining this workshop.

Follow-up activities are expected during mid-August in conjunction with the ISO IEC JTC1 WG9 Big Data Reference Architecture Meeting held in Dublin and during autumn 2017.

The European Data Science Academy (EDSA) is excited to announce a series of Summer Bootcamps across Europe.

During the EDSA Machine Learning Bootcamp for Data Scientists, participants will start on their machine learning journey by acquiring hands-on experience with machine learning models, methods, and algorithms, so that they will be able to tackle real-world machine learning challenges. Topics covered will include machine learning theory, types of learning, techniques, models and methods. The labs are developed to practically learn how to use the R programming language and packages for applying the main concepts and techniques of Machine Learning.

BDVA will be represented on June 19-20 in the “Trans-Atlantic Symposium on ICT Technology and Policy – 5G Networks, Big Data, Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical Systems for a Smart Society”. Nikos Sarris (ATC, BDVA member) will chair the Expert Group on Big Data and Andreas Metzger (Paluno, BDVA Deputy Secretary General) will present BDVA and discuss opportunities for collaboration across EU and US. Representatives from all the US Big Data Innovation Hubs, as well as from NSF and NIST will be part of these discussions.

This year's i-KNOW takes place from October 11-12, 2017 (Save the date!)

i-KNOW 2017 has announced its Call for Workshops where they invite the scientific community to organise workshops dedicated to a specific topic connected to the data-driven future, such as Industry 4.0 and Professional learning 4.0, Computational Life Sciences and Open Science, Data-driven Education and Learning Analytics, and Digital Humanities and Computational Social Sciences.