DIHNET.EU

The EDIH conference starts tomorrow and more than 2.300 people have already registered. With more than 30 sessions and several of them taking place in parallel, it can be overwhelming to plan the sessions you want to attend. Do not worry! We have curated a list of the 10 sessions you should not miss!

1. Commission infosession on the upcoming call in DEP
This plenary session will take place the 26th of January and will present the current status of the Digital Europe Programme (DEP). Anne-Marie Sassen, Head of Unit “Digital transformation of industrial ecosystems” of DG CONNECT, and Geraud Guilloud from Luxinnovation will explain the programme, the calls and there will be a Q&A for those wanting to ask questions.
When: 26 January, 12:15h CET

2. Championing SMEs to digitalise, innovate and grow
Lucilla Sioli, Director of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Industry at DG CONNECT, will moderate this plenary session with speakers Mario Grotz, Ministry of economy of Luxembourg, Kristina Sinemus, Minister for the digital strategy of Hessen, Sebastiano Tofalleti, Head of European DIGITAL SME Alliance, and Bianca Muntean, Manager of Transilvania Digital Innovation Hub. The session will focus on the interplay of public support to the EDIHs and SME outreach in the context of national economic fabric, its industrial and digital priorities, and how to ensure territorial coverage and digital technology competences for the target sectors. What will be the sizing of EDIHs? What are the expected services and number of SMEs they will have to reach? This and other questions will be discussed during the session aiming at answering how to achieve digitalisation at a scale.
When: 26 January, 10:15h CET

3. EDIHs: Forging European collaboration
Maurits Butter, scientific coordinator of DIHNET project, will talk about the European Collaboration between EDIHs and how this can stimulate the use of regional strengths for Europe at large. The experts Giovanna Galasso from AI DIH, Pierre-Damien Berger from Minalogic, Mayte Carracedo from Funding Box and Andreas Ocklenburg from CloudSME will provide their view on inspiring ways to create sustainable European collaboration between the EDIHs.
When: 26 January, 11:15h CET

4. Digitizing SMEs, the European Way
Kristin Schreiber, Director SME policy, DG GROW will be accompanied by Peter Berkowitz, DG Regio and Sasha Baillie, CEO Luxinnovation to explore the role that the EDIHs play in the digital transformation of Europe’s economy. What can we learn from what we have done so far, how can we better link the various initiatives into a seamless service for SMEs?
When: 26 January, 14:00h CET

5. The Digital Transformation Accelerator driving the European EDIH network
This session will present a concise overview of the Digital Transformation Accelerator (DTA). The DTA focuses on creating a structural collaboration between the EDIHs and connect them to other EU networks by facilitating information exchange, brokerage, train-the-trainer, etc. But this can only be successful if the individual EDIHs are actively and structurally collaborating. This session will discuss the balance between what the EDIHs can bring to the DTA and what they can receive.
When: 27 January, 10:15h CET

6. Providing a seamless service between European Digital Innovation Hubs, Enterprise Europe Network and Startup Europe
The SME Strategy mentions that European networks, like the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) and Startup Europe and the European Digital Innovation Hubs should offer a seamless service to SMEs. There are plans for a Memorandum of Understanding between the different Commission services involved in these networks (DG GROW, DG CNECT and the EASME agency). But individual EDIHs also need to collaborate with their local counterparts from EEN and Startup Europe. This session will give an overview of the three networks and ideas to make the collaboration happen. It will also identify barriers that need to be addressed for a fruitful collaboration.
When: 26 January, 15:00h CET

7. Making operational the regional and EU functions of an EDIH
In this session, Mayte Carracedo, Chief Business Developer at FundingBox and member of DIHNET, will be accompanied by the four finalists of the 2020 DIHNET Champions Challenge. They will explore how future EDIHs can better operationalize the regional and European function with regards to the “test before invest”, “access to finance”, “Ecosystems” and “Skills and training”. The session will provide suggestions of operational activities that the EDIHs could deploy.
When: 27 January, 11:15h CET

8. Creating EDIH corridors
Creating sustainable EU-collaborations between EDIHs (EDIH corridors) is more than one ad-hoc collaboration and requires a solid business model for structured collaboration. This session will explore the challenges of EDIHs to create sustainable interregional collaborations, as well as finding ways how they can be forged. It will include a panel discussion and two examples of current interregional DIH-DIH collaborations that go beyond collaboration in grant projects such as Horizon2020.
When: 27 January, 12:15h CET

9. Towards cross-border Digital Innovation Hubs
Economy of scales, budget restriction, critical mass, it will be difficult for a single EDIH to cover all the technical expertise foreseen in the DEP for all the sectors of the EU economy and EU society. Cooperation with other EDIH will be a necessity that will be supervise by the DTA. But is there room for a different type of cooperation between EDIH, and more specifically a more geographical approach? What would be the interest of the SME? The objective of this session is to explore and illustrate the concept of cross-border (E)DIH (beyond one region jurisdiction).
When: 26 January, 16:00h CET

10. Measuring the impact of European Digital Innovation hubs
The Digital European Programme foresees a number of KPIs to measure EDIH deployment and performance; including the evaluation of the digital maturity progress of the EDIH´s customers, as well as the market creation potential of their innovations subject to the “Test before invest” function. This session will start with an overview of which KPIs EDIHs should collect and how they are related to each other, to focus on indicators and tools to measure the digital maturity and innovations of EDIH customers. Some practical experiences and potential needs will be discussed in the panel.
When: 27 January, 11:15h CET

In case you want to find more sessions, you can take a look to the whole agenda, https://event.e-dih.eu/#extra_1610017770426

If you have not registered for the conference, you can still do it today!
Register: https://event.e-dih.eu/

Looking forward to welcoming you at the #EDIH2021 conference!

The DIHNET Team