Rationale and Objectives
After 3 years of operating under the IANIS+ banner, eris@ is again organising an annual conference for regions committed to their development through the information society.
The conference, organised in close cooperation with the Welsh Assembly Government, will take place back-to-back with the fourth annual
eCrime Wales Summit (taking place at the same venue on Wednesday 11
th June). The agendas of both events have been carefully planned to attract delegates to attend both. These combined events will create an almost unique forum to consider the risks and rewards of eAdoption and to learn more about new innovative paradigms, relevant policy responses, and the problems and challenges that they bring.
The eris@ Annual Conference 2008 will:
- debate issues of vital concern for Europe and its regions - offering a range of perspectives from regional, national European and global levels on the opportunities and challenges that regions will face;
- offer participants the opportunity to gain understanding of the ways regions can contribute to the Lisbon Agenda and their own development;
- focus on Innovation and Creativity, the critical success factors in the emerging Knowledge Society.
Whilst the accelerated adoption of ICT and the assisted development of new processes, practices and organisation structures can bring important opportunities and rewards, the increasing dependence on technology also carries some risks and challenges, suc as the potential use of technology for criminal purposes.
The conference will also host a half-day parallel session on the results and conclusions of two EU-funded projects that various European regions have been involved with. They are:
-
TRANSFORM ‘Transformative uses of ICT’. This project concerns defining the benefits of the transformative uses of ICT and how regions could benchmark themselves in these terms.
-
PEARDROP ‘Promoting Ecosystems and Regional Development in support of Regional Operational Programming’. This project has been seeking to promote the deployment of regional digital business ecosystems (DBE) as a new paradigm for regional development. The session will draw on the experiences of a number of regions that have been planning to set up a DBE as well as to demonstrate a range of planning tools developed by the project.
The conference programme will be supported by the European Commission and two Commissioners have been invited to participate. In addition, a former Director General has been invited. Keynote speakers invited include Prof. Richard Florida (University of Toronto) and Prof. Manuel Castells (University of Catalonia) as well as leading figures from organisations engaged in fighting eCrime. The conference also benefits from the committed support of the Welsh Assembly Government.
Regions and regional projects from throughout Europe will be widely represented throughout the conference.
To download the conference flyer, click
here.
To know more about the conference Target Audience, click
here.
To know more about the e-Crime Summit, click
here