Transforming skills to meet innovation challenges – WS 05 2019: Difference between revisions

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20 June 2019 | 11:00-12:30  | MISSISSIPPI | [[image:Icons_live_20px.png | Video recording | link=https://youtu.be/GzW6rA-T0qM]] | [[image:Icon_transcript_20px.png | Transcription | link=#Transcript]]<br />
[[Consolidated programme 2019|'''Consolidated programme 2019 overview''']]<br /><br />
[[Consolidated programme 2019|'''Consolidated programme 2019 overview''']]<br /><br />
Title: <big>'''Transforming skills to meet innovation challenges'''</big><br /><br />
Proposals assigned to this session: ID 20, 111, 193, 207 – [https://www.eurodig.org/fileadmin/user_upload/eurodig_The-Hague/statistik_proposals_all/proposals_for_2019_2018-12-04__01_final_web_IDs_ver1.pdf list of all proposals as pdf]<br /><br />
Proposals assigned to this session: ID 20, 111, 193, 207 – [https://www.eurodig.org/fileadmin/user_upload/eurodig_The-Hague/statistik_proposals_all/proposals_for_2019_2018-12-04__01_final_web_IDs_ver1.pdf list of all proposals as pdf]<br /><br />
== <span class="dateline">Get involved!</span> ==  
== <span class="dateline">Get involved!</span> ==  
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== Messages ==   
== Messages ==   
A short summary of the session will be provided by the Reporter.
*Our current digital-driven society requires new learning skills for building the necessary competence to meet technological innovation challenges. Policymakers, businesses, and civil society should co-operate to create a sustainable working environment. Using the Netherlands as a case study, Dutch public authorities have recognised two challenges: (1) the need for new types of experts, and (2) that digitalisation has changed the entire labour market. The Netherlands fosters public-private partnerships to address digital literacy and have included the topic in primary and secondary education.
*Universities should consider implementing projects that can solve practical and emerging social issues, including cybersecurity challenges at both the local and international level. Capacity building should encompass private and public partnerships in order to tackle the cybersecurity workforce shortage. Under-supply and under-skilling in the labour market have to be addressed together, and not as separate problems.
*Public initiatives in Portugal have been created to enhance digital competences and address the challenges posed by technology to citizens’ rights, employment, and knowledge. Action has been taken to in terms of inclusion, education, qualification, specialisation, and research to improve digital literacy.
*Digital literacy can improve vulnerable people’s lives. Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, could include refugees in the economic system. Digital identities could give refugees access to services that are denied by public authorities and traditional analogical systems. The challenge is that many refugees have no digital skills. Humanitarian groups, public authorities, and the private sector should invest on the digital training of vulnerable people to improve their lives.
 
 
Find an independent report of the session from the Geneva Internet Platform Digital Watch Observatory at https://dig.watch/sessions/transforming-skills-meet-innovation-challenges.


== Video record ==
== Video record ==
Will be provided here after the event.
https://youtu.be/GzW6rA-T0qM


== Transcript ==
== Transcript ==
Will be provided here after the event.
Provided by: Caption First, Inc., P.O. Box 3066, Monument, CO 80132, Phone: +001-800-825-5234, www.captionfirst.com
 
 
''This text, document, or file is based on live transcription. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART), captioning, and/or live transcription are provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. This text, document, or file is not to be distributed or used in any way that may violate copyright law.''
 
 
>> MODERATOR: Good morning, everyone. We'll give people a few more minutes and then we'll start. Maybe 2 more minutes.
 
>> OLIANA SULA:good morning, everyone.
 
Thank you for coming to our session. Transforming skills to meet innovation challenges, Workshop Number 5 following under the category of innovation and economic issues.
 
Today, we will be your moderators of the session, it is Oliana Sula and Olga Kyryliuk. Actually it is not the first time that we are coorganizing a session on digital skills. We organized last year a session about digital skills in general, but this year, the focus of our session, it is more how to relate skills to the challenges of innovation and as well to the environment, the dynamic environment that changes all the time, and employees, employers, companies, entrepreneurs, business, they have to face constantly a lot of challenges. So at our session, we aim to bring to the table different perspectives from different stakeholders. And we want to bring a global perspective, Netherlands, they're the host country, let's see what they're doing here and have best practice and see the challenges that they're facing.
 
Olga, furthermore, she'll introduce the format of our session and we'll kindly introduce to you our speakers.
 
>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: Thank you. Good morning, everyone.
 
Now you have a bit of an idea of what's going to happen in terms of the contents and we will share with you also how we'll be organizing this session in terms of the format. As you can see, the speakers are sitting in front of you and they can also see you ‑‑ you have a spare Chair in between them. This is the Chair for any of you at any point of our discussion once the speakers will give their brief introductory statements and speeches and explain what they're doing, how they see, what skills are needed nowadays in the labor market and any of you can just join the row, take the free seat and be the speaker yourself and share your perspective on the issue that we'll be discussing here today for an hour and a half, and basically just feel free to join and to share your opinions and perspectives, and also I will kindly ask if there is somebody from the remote participation, to just give us a sign and see where you can share with us the comment, the question if it is coming in, and at this point let's give the floor to our speakers and see whether digital skills indeed create opportunities, is this the challenges, the innovations, and this whole framework is changing whether we can't anymore use any old skills, whether we really need to be permanently reeducated to meet the requests coming from the labor markets and our first speaker.
 
>> OLIANA SULA: Yes.
 
Our first speaker, if I am not pronouncing it wrong, it is Thigs van Reekum from the Minister of Climate Affairs from Netherlands, and he'll tell you a bit more about what they're doing in their ministry and what are the challenges that they're facing as well as the best practices that we can share from Netherlands.
 
>> THIJS VAN REEKUM: Thank you.
 
I'm Thigs van Reekum, indeed.
 
Within the Ministry of Economic Affairs I'm responsible for the digital skills policy, and so we don't really have a responsibility as a ministry. The department, it is responsible for education, and we have a social affairs department that is responsible for the learning and we're stimulating the digital skills to enhance skills on the labor market and also to get the right people at the labor market and so we actually see two major challenges, one is that we need a lot of new experts, new digital technologies like AI, IoT, Big Data analysis, challenges us with right experts. We need new types of experts, we need new curriculum, new innovation in universities and so that's one challenge that we see and another challenge, it is that digitalization, it is transforming the whole of the labor market. Digital skills are needed if you're working in education, in that sector itself, whether you're working in logistics, you have self‑driving cars forks that will transform the whole logistics department.
 
We see a lot of challenges that digitalization puts us in front of.
 
So one of the key challenges actually is that we don't know which skill set is really needed at the labor market.
 
We don't really know what the labor market will bring us. We only know that what we need at this current point. we can look at approximately 1 year in advance to see what kind of experts we need, what skills we need, different types of sectors. We don't ‑‑ we cannot predict the future labor market. If we look at, for example, how digital skills have changed throughout the last ten years, for example, yeah, it is highly unlikely that we're able to predict 2, 3 years in advance.
 
So we have ‑‑ we have a general approach, first we need to put the basics in order so we need to stimulate digital skills or more general skills, and in the primary, the secondary education. So we're currently updating our curriculum for the primary, secondary education and digital literacy, it is one of the prominent new topics within the new curriculum.
 
Secondly, we are ‑‑ when it comes to education, we see a lot of challenges there. Well, jobs are changing, and the Dutch approach, it is basically to stimulate public‑private partnerships. We enhance stimulating companies and universities to work together to update the curriculum to innovate and to really also help let companies help universities to update their curriculum. We cannot predict it, some companies do know what expertise they need, and we will try to, yeah, really enforce it, the corporation between vocation education institutions and universities of applied sciences to work together to see what is needed in that current curriculum.
 
Thirdly, probably one of the most important challenges that every country faces, that's lifelong learning. Throughout all of Europe we see countries struggling with stimulating lifelong learning filtering in their country. Also in the Netherlands.
 
We also struggle with stimulating people from approximately 40 and above to keep them learning because the tendency, the culture is I don't want to go back to school. So we have a hard nut to crack in lifelong learning debate, and maybe some of the key challenges, key solutions, it will be that we have some regional, local initiatives that work really good and how do we make those local initiatives work for the whole sector, the logistics, we have a good Example of logistics. How do we translate that one particular initiative to the old country or to the old sector. So these are merely the main solutions that we see as a phasing of the transforming skills in the labor market.
 
>> OLIANA SULA: Thank you for your point.
 
We'll have the occasion during the session to develop more of these points.
 
Now we will introduce our other speaker.
 
>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: We had such great speakers in our panel today, so I'm kind of eager to introduce them one by one. On the other side, I want them to speak more because I'm so curious to listen to their perspectives. Now I want to give the floor to Catherine Garcia‑van Hoogstraten, she's a researcher in data governance technology and in cybersecurity and public sector digitalization at the Hague University of applied sciences. She's also public sector digital consultant and advisory global forum on cyber expertise, and recently she was a part of a very interesting initiative which is the research challenge competition and please share with us a bit more how it looked like and how you came to this idea.
 
>> CATHERINE GARCIA-VAn HOOGSTRATEN: Right.
 
Thank you for having me. I thank to the EuroDIG also, the Internet governance, this is a perfect place to discuss this specific topic and to have all of us sitting together to see what are the potential solutions.
 
I would just ‑‑ we conducted a study, conducted some sort of a survey with our members, first of all, the Global Forum of Cyber Expertise, it is a public‑private partnership between different public and private stakeholders ranging from world economic forum, World Bank, Council of Europe, all the way to different companies such as Microsoft, you name it.
 
So the main idea of the forum is to create a cyber capacity building. In the aim of creating this cyber capacity building we have divided our work in different working groups. One of the working groups where I'm supporting and providing advice as an advisory board member is the one on cyber workforce development.
 
In April we issue a white paper, and I'm going to only share one of the main conclusions that actually links to the project I'm dealing with the Hague University of applied sciences, a main conclusion, it was that there is indeed ‑‑ I think this is not new, that you have heard, read, discussed this before, there is a very obvious cybersecurity skills shortage. However, when discussing this with our members, and through the survey, we have realized that basically all the policies that are aiming to put in the solution is distinguished between two categories, the first one is to increase the pipeline of cybersecurity professionals, this is called under supply. The distinguishing is between those seeking to increase the candidates, this is called under skilling. So one of the potential solutions we found out, it is eventually that there is a correlation of these two different under skilling and up skilling, it correlates to the lack of professional experience especially of graduates and the absence of entry level opportunities.
 
Taking one of these conclusions in account, one of these conclusions that is drafted for the paper and having the fantastic opportunity to work at the Hague University of applied sciences, that's based here in the Hague, I had the chance to work there and to be able to connect with one important public stakeholder, the Dutch defraud agency, they came to us, they asked us, hey, we see that there is a skill shortage on financial cybercrimes. Can we hold ‑‑ should we jointly organize a challenge programme together? That's how we came together to organize the Fiat research challenge programme.
 
Eight weeks, it provided us enough time to work in two teams, some of them, they were sitting here and one of the participants, they're sitting right around the table, information security management, law, European studies, you name it, and two teams working for eight weeks doing research on two topics pertaining to financial cybercrimes, one was on services and the other one was on centralized change platforms.
 
Topics that are in itself problematic for the public sector stakeholder, however, the combination of putting together multidisciplinary team and what we have talked about, at applied science perspective, it gives enough venue and time for being able to put in practice these skills, but also to harness softer skills such as teamwork, critical analysis, collaborative skills.
 
The results were we have to say fantastic. We did have a winner team of this challenge programme, it was by the way my team! By no surprise! I'm not only very proud of them but very proud of the outcome. They provided a research‑based recommendations to the fiat. And they were very pleased with the results in this sense and so this is a way to also connect the underlying white paper with the practice. I think this is one of the ‑‑ one of the main triggers and the main drivers as well, most importantly, of what we should be all doing at Universities. We should be able to not only connect, but to sit around the table and jointly indeed be able to put together projects that can solve the social issues, challenges, not only in what concerns cybersecurity bunny other societal challenges that are around the international global, International Level.
 
So I'm very proud of having been able to participate here, and obviously there is a lot of data we are drawing from this research challenge in itself. So I don't know if you have the link for ‑‑ it is a one‑minute video I think that can show you the main features of the research challenge programme we have at the Hague University of Applied Sciences.
 
>> OLIANA SULA: Can we ask technical support to show the video on the screen?
 
>> CATHERINE GARCIA-VAn HOOGSTRATEN: That's the story in one minute.
 
Please, if you are very interested to ‑‑ well, gather with us and be able to also jointly organize any other projects, anyone around the table, you're more than welcome to approach me and talk about it. Yeah. Go around any opportunities, any other opportunities.
 
Thank you.
 
>> OLIANA SULA: For me, it sounds so interesting and I don't even know more ‑‑ I would like that we have some similar projects being implemented in our countries, in our region. It feels that the Netherlands is just the perfect place to be in terms of this private public partnership. I remember when we went with you last year, you were ‑‑ speaking about this directly, I was thinking, okay, this is something that we have talked about in theory, I didn't really understand that this could be that much implemented in practice, thank you for this fresh perspective.
 
>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: After having two interesting representatives from very two important stakeholders such as government and then academia, and especially the academia perspective, which is my field as well, and talking about how to ‑‑ how we can make more interdisciplinary projects and to increase this cooperation between different actors, now we wanted in this session to have more practical perspective on skills and to have maybe business point of view or from a point of view or an approach from the business sector, so we decided to invite our next speaker, which is Ruben Brave. He is a member of the Internet society chapter in the Netherlands, founder and make media great again and a business incubator intelligence.
 
>> RUBEN BRAVE: Do we have to sit down or ‑‑ everybody is sitting down.
 
Dear organizing teams, participants, thank you for inviting me to your forum. In my speech I tried to connect the dots with my personal experience, trades, skills when coping with innovation challenges and mythology according to Starwars. I had the pleasure, honoring being Part of the national telecom provider and the and also the largest IT related publishing company in the Netherlands. Excuse me for my voice. I have a bit of hay fever. It sounds a bit strange!.
 
Also I was involved in the publishing of the largest publisher of magazines in the world.
 
Actually to play a role, a key role in their application of Internet technology and related innovations.
 
So as I was entirely captivated by innovations, I decided in 2009 to convert my management company to a so‑called business incubator where I match technology off the shelf from knowledge institutions such as universities or institutes like the Netherlands organization for applied science research with the market. Our various technological marketing has had varying degrees of success. Still if you have to provide financial room in 2013 for long‑term sabbatical. During my sabbatical, I not only had the opportunity to spend more time with my family and social network, but also to explore other forums of capital such as capital and spiritual capital often with the intention of leaving a diverse legacy for our daughters, the next generation.
 
This phase, which I sometimes jokingly call my business withdraw phase from the business world gave me the opportunity to think deeply about the balance between the various forms of capital, this phase has transformed me.
 
Last year at the end of my sabbatical I was deeply moved when my best friend made marriage plans to his Russian love and asked me to perform at their marriage as a special civil servant at least for a day.
 
As I didn't really know his wife to be, the risk for unbalanced speech was real. Desperately I was seeking a suitable link between my good friend and future wife, between a very well‑known world and the yet unknown, bridging the gap. Luckily, they both love movies. That became my starting point and soon I stumbled upon a framework that not only was good for both of them, about you also provided insight into the skills needed to cope with life‑sized changes, the monomyth or hero journey, a key element in the mythology. The hero's journey, it is the common template of a broad category of it.
 
Alees and Lure involving a hero or heroine that goes on an adventure, the myth narrative started in 1871 and eventually, the hero Mythacus influenced and has inspired George Lucas, creator of Starwars. So the hero is special, but rarely a perfect person although it seems they possess some secret or special powers. The hero embarks on a quest, faces challenges, dangers, is victorious after a crisis and in the end comes home. Changed. Transformed. The hero has departure, initiation and three, return so departure refers to the call to adventure, crossing the threshold, withdraw from the community for meditation and preparation, and initiation relates to trials and quests and going to the underworld of the metaphor for the subconscious and return of the resurrection, the rebirth, returning with the master of two worlds..
 
Let's see how to use this pattern in the light of this session's theme. As one of the methods of tricks that you often use as an incubator when introducing technology is to copy and paste methods from one area into a different area. For example, you imitate the model systems and elements of nature for the purpose of solving complex human problems. For instance, aircraft wing design, flight techniques are inspired by birds and bats and that's inspired the flight.
 
Thus, how could the hero's journey framework, a transformative journey that a hero and entrepreneur, an employee undergoes, can give direction to the skills, personality traits and learning methods that shed some light on the ask EL subgroup needed for the 21st Century. What inspiring overlaps are there within country plans human research knowledge, technology applications and the hue he row's journey.
 
‑‑ hero's journey.
 
As we see our company, intelligence, as a testing ground for action learning, that is learning by doing, experiencing, combined with systematic reflection on it, but also action research, transformative change through the simultaneous process or taking action and doing research which are linked together by critical reflection. We had opportunity to look into the previous failures and pivots, including the development of the two recent the startups we make use of scientific knowledge and crowdsourcing to combat misinformation of fake news which resulted in a blockchain base transparent and structured system for actionable suggestions and annotations, from a community pull of knowledge and critical thinking and diverse readers. We have a first partner, and in both cases, intelligence appears to be the coat driver, a lot of things compare the workplace success and intelligence, the latter is often considered not to be measured. So certainly fluid intelligence, the caps tip to quickly master unknown thinking models seems promising.
 
The curiosity, the new thinking scheme, it seems relevant for a firm departure for the world but our incubation practice showed something else, appearing there was conflicts in introduction of innovation resulting in severe irritation and resistance. There was a trial that forces us to go in the deeper world of meaning that new technology confronts us with.
 
The master key to finally pass all mental phases in uncertain context that often join innovation seems to lie in emotions, not in the sense of instincts but in the sense of motivations.
 
Motives, that determine our behavior, within a group.
 
Emotional intelligence is mentioned more often nowadays, but it is emotion stability as an anchor between events in the outside world and the inner personal world that seems to guarantee the sustainability of our practice.
 
Most appropriate behavior for suitable cooperation, it is in that case the result of a conscience inner experience and mental reflection on the entire situation so holistic reflection.
 
Designing and using technology encourages an inclusive process which we're constantly encouraged to think consciously about our own perception and about the perception of others, taking the space and time to reflect about the forces within ourselves, outside of ourselves, and the bridge that we as individuals can or sometimes must build in the case of unknown challenges, the application or adoption of technology.
 
So that together we can write a new narrative.
 
Thank you for your attention.
 
>> OLIANA SULA: Thank you very much, Ruben for your point. a very inspiring speech. I would suggest that you made a great parallelism between the nice story you told in the beginning and how actually are ‑‑ how it is working ‑‑ how to deal with all the applied skills and action learning and action research in the field of Entrepreneurship specifically.
 
Now we will pass to the next speaker which Olga will introduce very kindly.
 
>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: We also have with us Sofia Rasgado, who is a coordinator of the Portuguese Safer Internet Center and it is really interesting for us to know your perspective on how you see what skills are needed nowadays and how we can keep and adapt to the ever fasting it change in technological development.
 
>> SOFIA RASGADO: Thank you. And I'm here on behalf of the Internet Center, but I'll present the Portuguese programme called Encode 2030. I think it is most suitable for what we're discussing here today.
 
So regarding the Portuguese programme, Encode 2030 national ‑‑ it is a national digital competence initiative. We live in a world that increasingly relies on digital technologies and where online electronic devices are the most common form of interaction creating a more resilient society involving developing a new competent, particularly digital ones which are constantly changing and evolving.
 
Encode 2030, it is an integrated public policy initiative to enhance digital competencies.
 
Some of you may think that Encode 2030, it is an economy for code but it isn't.
 
It would be too minimalistic. In initiative, code, it is for competencies, the skills, D means digital, and E, it stands for Europe. So to make the link with Europe fast we uses in eCommerce, eHealth, eRights and so on. Of course 2030 is the period of the programme.
 
Therefore, with this, we intend to cover areas and look at what's already been done. In this sense, all of the ministries involved, they're boosted by the prime ministry. We have together working the Ministry of Science and technology and higher education, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, the Ministry of Planning and infrastructures, the presidency and modernization and the Presidents of the council of ministries, besides the different public bodies involved encode 2030 brings also together and encourages the collaboration between people with different experience and knowledge from the private sector, academia, Civil Society.
 
And what are the challenges for Portugal in the area of digital competences? We can identify three areas. Citizenship, employment, knowledge.
 
Digital competencies, they're essential for both exercising full citizenship and to facilitate employability. By meeting the needs of an increasing digitalization of the labor market, the more skilled working population gives rise to more new jobs as well as the markets and products leading to more competitive and robust economic activities.
 
Digital competence, it is also very important for the development of a critical, multifaceted awareness and to promote social well‑being and inclusion.
 
At the same time, the country itself must be an active agent in the global effort to produce new scientific computing knowledge and develop the capacity to manage and use large amount of information to ensure a better position in Europe and the world.
 
We cannot wait to find out what the new technologies will be, my argument is that we have to be part of their creation.
 
So to achieve the goals of this programme, we designed five action lines.
 
So action line 1, it is about inclusion, making sure that the whole population has equal access to digital technologies to obtain information, communicate and interact with others.
 
The second, the action line, it is about education, educating the younger population by simulating and reinforcing digital literacy and digital skills at all levels of schooling and as part of life‑long learning.
 
Action line 3, qualification, it is about qualifying the working population, by providing them with the knowledge they need to become a part of a labor market that relies heavily on digital skills. Action line 4, promoting specialization in digital technologies and to improving employability and to create higher added value in the economy.
 
The last one, it is about investigation.
 
Providing the conditions for the production ‑‑ for the production of new knowledge and an active participation in international RND networks and programs.
 
So for each action line we have specific target audience. For inclusion, we talk about ‑‑ it is for the target group of people over 55 years old, low education level and vulnerable people. The second line, education, it is for students, teachers, trainers, other agents of education and training system.
 
The qualification, it is the qualification of mid‑level technicians, qualification and retraining of the unemployed, and of public service employees.
 
Specialization, it is to promote specialization in the academia, the graduation, master degrees, Ph.D., advanced ICT training courses and the last line, investigation, it is for researchers. Therefore, the Portugal encode 2030 initiative as a broad scope in the drive towards digital development starting with the promotion of digital inclusion and literacy, educating the young generations from an early age, qualifying the active population and specialization of the graduate for advanced digital jobs and to turn the country into a new contributor to the new digital developments.
 
And to monetarize and evaluate the achievement of the programme goals was creating ‑‑ was created and observatory for digital competence and just to give you an idea about the governance of the programme, it involves three permanent bodies, a permanent forum for digital competence, responsible for gathering and coordination from a range of private, public companies and institutions to ensure widespread mobilization towards encode 2030.
 
A coordination structure, it oversees the general lines of action and initiative as a whole.
 
Promoting and coordinating the activities in each action line to guarantee a common focus and purpose updating the general and specific goals and objectives.
 
And a technical Secretariat that monitors, records and reports on the implementation of all the planned activities, in close articulation with the coordination structure and the forum for digital competencies.
 
This is an idea of what in Portugal we're doing about raising digital competence and skills.
 
Thank you.
 
>> OLIANA SULA: Thank you very much.
 
Really interesting to know what's happening in tore countries and what we can borrow from you as the best practices examples to be implemented in the countries of our region, which is South Eastern Europe. Now moving to the next speaker
 
>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: We are lucky to have on our panel two speakers that are really ‑‑ or three maybe, that are really from ‑‑ they're entrepreneurs, they have their own companies and that they have really interesting stories to tell us.
 
Not that the other stories were not interesting, of course.
 
First, I want to introduce Alexander Gunkel. He's managing director and founder of space 4 Good. You can tell us even more about your story and then how ‑‑ how you see this thing of relating skills needed for entrepreneurs nowadays. Especially your case, what skills were necessary at the beginning, and then now how do you feel about this for the future especially.
 
>> ALEXANDER GUNKEL: We have a button up experience and I'm really happy to have this discussion with the people creating the policy and working on a programme level here.
 
My personal experience, basically I want to bring it from being a misfit, being an entrepreneur, a manager, also being a coach. I think all of those things sum how are connected in the topic of skills, specifically the digital skills.
 
I personally studied mechanical engineering in business in Germany and this very, very knowledge‑based approach. Extreme in this case, very much like that. I realized in the studies I just ‑‑ it didn't fit with me. I powered through, I didn't quit. Maybe I should have. It just didn't work.
 
I actually discovered in other countries something which resonated much better for me, one was South Africa, one was here in the Netherlands. Just saying that Netherlands here, you are really doing a good job, kind of teaching a I plied skills at your University and also applied universities and this kind of opened up this whole new dimension of saying it is not just about learning from books, kind of just looking at videos, but actually really working on cases, working as a team, really doing something, what is worthwhile, what can be directly applied? In this case, I had found my passion for Entrepreneurship here in the Netherlands, through a programme that was stimulating this ‑‑ yeah, this ‑‑ this spring of new ideas of young people trying to innovate and technical context.
 
So I started to work in the space agency, a knowledge‑based organization, after a year I realized I'm just doing the same mistake over and over again. Then in 2012 to 2013 I decided I have to start my own company. Indeed I did. Now it is three different one, all using space technology for social environment impacts and what the interesting thing is about startups, startups operate in fields where they shouldn't be a lot of knowledge already. They shouldn't be like a lot of Intellectual Property available for you to fall back into knowledge‑based approaches. It is really just about the skills, about the personality, about motivation to make things happen.
 
That's where I started to feel comfortable as an individual. That's also where I had to transform myself also to become a manager to find cofounder, employees, how do you find them? Not by again looking and seeing the knowledge‑based experts operating in new fields where this knowledge is not existing yet, I really wanted to disrupt and innovate. You look actually at personalities of the people whom maybe resonates with you, who are just up for challenges, that may have studied something completely else and if they convince me in one, two hours, that they're going to do whatever it takes to acquire a ‑‑ to have new skills and develop this, those are the employees you're looking for specifically with this data. Eventually it matures. After one, two hours, you figure out what's the market, what's the products we have to develop, you have the reputation and you start to make the processes.
 
I think that's where you maybe start working again.
 
It is more with the combination of skills and knowledge.
 
The funny thing is, you know, it is not only a true forum for startups but big corporates, let's talk about Phillips. At one point they started a startup, but now like multinationals, thousands were working there, and that's ‑‑ they realized that they have to continue innovating. They have been blindfolded by a digital disruption and they realized they're not equipped for new challenges, they're being threatened by startups now, just Cherry‑picking the interesting market segments and you realize you have to do something, that we have to innovate startups. There is a whole term with this startup methodologies that now big corporates are acquiring and what they're trying to learn and understand, it is that there are different time spans in innovations, and the time span where you discover, where you learn new things and there is the time afterwards where you just want to scale, where you want to create processes.
 
That's something that now needs to be implemented, needs to be learned in this organization to figure out and what stage are we and all of the different stages will require different skills, they require different tools and they also require different mindsets. That's kind of maybe the key set, we have to figure out, you know, where are we right now? Is it disruptive, new territory? Which is new to the country, new to the market, new to the sector, or is this something that we already figured out and now we have to just excel and start building our workforce accordingly.
 
So three, four things, you know, first on the standing, you know. Understanding, where are we now, what do we need to do? Awareness creation, it is not sitting here, discussing this, but this whole other entrepreneur that doesn't have time now to be here, or like other corporates that they're doing the day‑to‑day business and we have to reach them. We have to still educate them, we've to educate them this applied learning and with trainings and with workshops, and also with the internships.
 
We're really having students from applied universities from University here from the Netherlands and around the world kind ever joining our startup, helping us, but working on this actually, actually helping ourselves.
 
>> OLIANA SULA: Thank you very much, Alex, for the great speech.
 
As well, I was happy, I saw some young people smiling when you mentioned about the relation that skills can be learned at school, at University or not, and they see always the same exterior precious in the world, I teach as well.
 
You will have the occasion to participate after our next speaker.
 
So now we'll end up with a very interesting story I guess, Olga will tell a bit more and then our speaker, of course.
 
>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: We have with us today Tey El‑Rjula. He's a cofounder and CEO at Tykn. For me personally, this is a very interesting story. You will have a chance to hear now. I will just say because I myself was working a few years in the humanitarian sector and for me, at some point, when I was just starting it I was thinking this is so much humanitarian work and I just understood that this is the repetition of the same working methods in every country where the humanitarian is coming and this is the emergency reaction to the means that they're there. Many people are still suffering from those problems and challenges that they have in those countries which with have not been solved for years. When I heard about this initiative, I thought wow, this is so great and had this is what we can do with the technology. Please share this story with us and with the rest of the audience. I thought this is really amazing, this example of what we can do for the people that are in most need of the help.
 
>> TEY EL-RJULA: To pick up where you and where we apply digital cooperation, digital skills, it is not in the corporate sector, not in the government, we apply it in the humanitarian industry. Why are we doing this? What is my background and how did all this start? I will say it is all by chance, by destiny. My background, I'm a software trainer, so for the past 15 years my job is to study software and to give it training to corporates, governments, banks, on how to use that software.
 
I focused on customer relationship management softwares, one, I was working in Dubai and I started ‑‑ I was one of the founding members of the telecom company there, life took me to the Netherlands and in 2010 I came here to continue my work as a software trainer and in 20 it 14 my contract was not renewed and the IND, the immigration services asked me to leave the country and go back where I came from.
 
Now, I cannot go to Dubai, to any other country, in 2014, I couldn't travel. I'm a Syrian national, so I carry the Syrian national, I have a Syrian passport. In 2014, the climax of the Civil War in Syria and I simply cannot leave the airport because my passport is expiring in 6 months. The only chance for me to stay in the Netherlands was to apply for asylum.
 
I felt it would be a short process, live in the country, I have a tax number, a dog, a house, but it ended up to finish in two and a half years. For two and a half years I'm moving between five refugee camps in the Netherlands and I met a lot of Syrians, more than 70,000 Syrians who shared the same experience as me that we're moving and with a piece of paper, given by the organization that helps refugees in the Netherlands, and as I can't have access to any type of service. I can't get a bank account, cannot get insurance, I cannot get ‑‑ go to school because simply I'm on a waiting list among 150,000 applications where immigration is deciding will you stay or no, will you leave the country.
 
There was my first interaction with what digitally can mean for us. And us, I say as refugees, because everything around us is based on paper. There is Facebook, linked in, social media, that's digital. There is a big gap between both.
 
The gap exists because we as refugees want to create that gap. We want to protect our privacy.
 
So refugees, they do not post their full name on Facebook. They do not talk about their families on Facebook. It is all ‑‑ you know, it is anonymous names. My real name, I'm known here as Tey.
 
That point, it made me think that in the digital age that we're in, we're missing one important factor, which is the privacy and security. While I was sitting at the camp I'm watching how trump is getting the seat as President and if we look at why did this happen, well, they were simply mining our data. They were figuring out through the Facebook model who is a Democrat, who is a republican, what do you like, what you don't like, they were tolerating it the campaign ‑‑ targeting the campaigns on the specific set of people that would be voting for Trump. We all realize that the biggest threat for our democracy today, the biggest threat for our own existence, it is the data, it is the social media, it is the centralized systems that is mining and looking at all of our data and using it for their own benefits and their own purposes.
 
Now we have Libra, a type of money built on Facebook. So we're not only giving our data, our personal data, no, now we have to give also our financial data. So Mark Zuckerberg, one person, he's not going to know about who is your father, mother, sister, what time did you check in at the hotel, what did you eat? He'll know how much you paid.
 
How much money you have. Who are you transacting with? To go back in history, in World War II, the Hague suffered from a massive ‑‑ it is not -- it is a disaster. In World War II, when the Germans, when the Nazis were roaming around the city, they were able to identify every house if there is a Jewish person in it, yes or no, every house in the Hague simply because of the technology, the punch card machine. That punch card was a machine used for civil purposes to connect houses together, to build a postal system, one person, they were able to look into that record keeper and see he's Jewish, non-Jewish. In the digital age, centralization of data is a big threat for everyone in this room not only for refugees but literally for everyone. This is where I thought, okay, we can use technology to protect citizens, to protect the privacy of the citizens, to protect the security of NGOs because in the whole business chain, whether you talk about corporates, governments, NGOs, the humanitarian sector, it’s the most vulnerable sector when it comes to cybersecurity.
 
I think you can agree with me on that.
 
There I was in a city, I lived four years in the Netherlands, all I had known was Amsterdam, after this, I was traveling and was introduced to new cities. I'm sitting there in this city, I'm looking for the past six months, I'm eating the same food, how can I change that? I asked the refugee organizers, we can Cook, can we go to the kitchen, Cook ourselves, we can feed each other? No, there is too much risk in that. Maybe you will burn your hand, fall, you will cut your finger, you are not ensured. Okay. You have a point..
 
But there is a website in the Netherlands, they accept by the coins, and I had bit coins on the phone, as a software trainer, I was an early adopter, so I paid for pizza using Bitcoin and it was delivered to the camp. Now why this is important, as a refugee, as I said, you're excluded from the services. You cannot have even a PayPal account, you cannot have a credit card.
 
So that technology, it broke the financial barriers put around societies and human race since the early dawn of human beings.
 
Today we are financially free. I do not have to wait for a bank to include me, I do not have to wait for a credit card company to include me. I do it myself.
 
Now that doing yourself, it is a new skill that didn't exist before.
 
It requires a lot of training, which all the panelists talk about, invest in the human, not in the technology. Let the human knowhow to set a good password, then you don't need a blockchain based cybersecurity startup.
 
If we know that setting cookies when I get the cookie on my website, if I take the three seconds to click that and put it to basic, I protect my privacy.
 
Then I don't need a whole new system to protect the privacy of people by Tykn. Here is the dilemma, do you want to work on the long term, invest in the human? You want to have shortcuts and build the short‑term solutions.
 
After my experience in Tykn in two years, we thought yeah, bring digital identities to refugees and open an online marketplace for them to transact, buy, sell, to do these things, we can bring digital healthcare, digital money, we can bring all of these amazing services. Digital literacy in the refugee camps is very low. I hit a wall.
 
We have 1.2 billion women around the world that cannot read and write.
 
That is a big problem.
 
I took a step back from pushing blockchain as the silver bullet for all of these problems that we're facing, which it can be if we know how to use it, if there is 70,000 days in their experience in the digital world in the Netherlands, yes, we can ‑‑ we have the best solution out there the.
 
I have a really good solution where people cannot use it. Simply because the digital skills and literacy, they're missing.
 
So in the end, it doesn't mean we have to stop. It is just we don't do ‑‑ I don't do pilots anymore, I don't do small projects anymore, we focus on really investing in the human and changing his ‑‑ improving his digital skills.
 
Hopefully this will be ‑‑ this information that we took today, I'll be taking it to Turkey by the end of this month where with the Turkmenistanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the UNDP, the Gates Foundation, many other startups, they'll be entering the refugee camps in Turkey with the approval of the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Turkey and see how can we help those vulnerable people, the refugees and improve their live, not only for them, but for the host country as well.
 
Then we can show that refugees are assets to the country and I can show that I don't wait for permission from anyone to innovate, I just simply innovate without permission.
 
Thank you.
 
>> OLIANA SULA: Thank you very much. That was very much inspiring and it gave a lot of food for thought and thinking of the projects, it thinking about what we can do, about new ideas and indeed that we should learn all the time, to be able to confront those challenges that are coming with innovations and we should not expect the technology to solve our problems, we should rather use technology and be well educated for that. So now we open the floor for the discussion, and feel free to raise your hand or just come, join the panel, take the free seat and ask questions, make comments, just tell us what you are thinking. We absolutely are open for any ideas.
 
We often look at the panel, think they're coming from any other world. Indeed, any of you could be a speaker. It doesn't require that much. It is more about what you have to share.
 
>> Yes.
 
>> Okay. Thank you to offer me a Chair. Thank you for all of your encouraging speaking.
 
The presentations, the stories, narratives, perhaps.
 
Yeah, I'm sitting here on behalf of the Dutch Information Society of information professionals, but I wanted to introduce an activity which is done in Europe and it is called a framework for digital competencies and I thought speaking here about ‑‑ about the skills, it is also to ‑‑ it is also important to know that there are already frameworks available to measure or to use in education system, and that's called the European ECF, eCompetence framework, but in some cases, everybody is thinking that it is only the framework, but it is not only the framework which is important, behind the framework are also the profiles of a lot of jobs, different jobs, and they're described not only with competences but also with skills and attitudes and the framework is also added now with transferal aspects which include, for example, security, so we're saying that next to the competences, you also need ‑‑ you also need ‑‑ we think it is important that everybody is thinking about security, ethics, that kind of elements. I do not know exactly which one are there, but there are 7.
 
And around the frameworks, we're also saying it is important to think about the body of knowledge, so the University, please help us create that body of knowledge. Not only a body of knowledge but the certification and registration. How can we make that we dressed each other with professional and digital skills. That we trust each other and the fourth one, it is, the ethics. So the code of conduct, so that we work in the same way, and that we can trust each other around the globe.
 
I wanted to add that to your marvelous line‑up already that's existing also.
 
Thank you.
 
>> OLIANA SULA: Thank you very much.
 
Any comment from your part? Someone from the audience? Yes. Please, come here. Here. Here. Yes. Yes.
 
Both of you, just introduce yourselves, please, then you go.
 
>> AUDIENCE: I'm here on the invitation of Council of Europe.
 
First off, I would like to make a comment, I'm really surprised we're talking about digital skills here and on the panel, I don't see any young person although I feel that a young person person are the most effected, they live in an education system that's grown and grown and grown over to the last years and it has major points to make up so prepare young people for the new world.
 
I think one of the most important things in this discussion, it is to really how can we make people know that what they're learning is actually what's relevant in the future. I mean, nowadays, you can see people study IT, that's ‑‑ that's one of the areas where you said, well, the job for sure, after three years, people are not ‑‑ people's knowledge, it is outdated.
 
If you undertake, if you do education, if you learn your skills, how can we assure them that they're actually relevant and that they stay relevant because nowadays we need to be much more flexible in terms of how we adapt to new requirements and what knowledge is required and maybe just to make one more point I think, we talked about social skills briefly, but I think what's really important nowadays, is since we have less and less and less hierarchies to also consider how do people act as individuals in a world where they don't have strong influences from the outside that guide them along their way. My points.
 
>> AUDIENCE: I'm from Georgia.
 
First of all, thank you for the interesting presentation and interesting points.
 
I will ask the questions, and what about ‑‑ from my point of view, nowadays, the digitalization, there is a concern, a challenge related to jobs lost and jobs gained and we all do not know what will be in 2040 and I think that you have mentioned that the mental intelligence, the mental balance is the most important part and I think it is important for our societies to implement and to create in the universities and not all of the universities, in the schools like the programs specific programs. It will help overcome the difficulties with the mental issues because ‑‑ I think that ‑‑ I'm ‑‑ youth nowadays, in Georgia for example, a large majority of the youth are struggling in the mental issues, for example, they cannot find the jobs because nowadays there are a lot of jobs but in the future, for example, drivers, other professionals jobs will be lost because of the AIs involvement and development. We have to think about it to create some specific programs, and while these programs, it is in the University sense, because this is my point of view, and for each, and if we can create some specific regulations, something, I will be glad to implement in my country too.
 
Thank you.
 
>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: Thank you very much.
 
>> Could I quickly answer? Thank you. You have a good point. there should have been students or at least a younger person than us!.
 
Than here on the panel.
 
The other question, it was how do I know what's going to be relevant for you. Whether the skills you're developing right now, the knowledge you're building up, is going to be useful and valuable for the job market and the answer for that, you know, you have to ‑‑ I convenient wouldn't have an answer right now. You have to get in contact with the professional ecosystem as soon as possible when we start studying, you don't wait 4, 5 years and then go to the job market. There has to be engagement with business, startups, corporates much more easier and there are three things which you have and the first, it is the motivation, how motivated are you also because I have people in the first year that have come to our businesses and they do paid assignments, so forth, the second point, personality, it is the introvert, extrovert and there are two things you can't do much about it yourself, looking through the environments, but the last part, education, the university should encourage engagement was startups as soon as possible, not only so that you know what's relevant with the skill but I figure out what you actually like throughout your studies, you come out exactly knowing what you want to do and what you like.
 
That's my take on that.
 
>> Can I respond? I wanted to respond to the remark concerning the learning gets old. I cooperate with the University of Amsterdam especially with the job knowledge research and they focus also on fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. To crystallize intelligence, actually the body of knowledge that's internalized by long‑term memory and that you ‑‑ that actually gets old because the application of that knowledge is maybe overturned by new discoveries.
 
So this is what my point was in the talk, that the fluid intelligence, the capacity to master new thinking models, it makes you more flexible and also gives you the ‑‑ the flexibility to really understand what is actually meant by the application of a certain technology. This way, for instance, a very simple example, you will be able to use the latest version of Windows while not having studied that operation system.
 
Second, there was a remark about mental issues, that was what the young lady there made.
 
So the link with this hero journey, it is also related to different roles that you encounter with people around you when you start learning.
 
So in my practice, we have sort of a triangle, we have a mentor who actually tells you what to do, what the targets are, and we have, of course, the entrepreneur and we have a coach. So the coach there tells you how the entrepreneur is able to obtain the goals that the mentor has set. This is sort of a triangle.
 
What we don't do, and this is actually due to a lack of resources in our own practice, it is that we don't include a therapist.
 
When it concerns guidance for the entrepreneur, you have the mentor, you have the coach, and then at the last point you will have a therapist actually.
 
Actually what I said before, due to lack of resources, we're not able to help the entrepreneurs who might have full fluid intelligence who will be very successful if also a lot of emotional intelligence, but there is no safeguard, safety net actually for those entrepreneurs. Actually the last year, I have experienced a very promising female entrepreneur and she actually helped restart up a startup that we had actually written off in the portfolio. We revived that startup. Unfortunately she got caught up in her own mental issues and we didn't have the resources to help her. I really think that's a lost case for us. We definitely will increase the success rate of our ink patience practice but yeah, it is still a work in progress.
 
A very good point.
 
>> I would maybe distract to be what you said, in reaction, because I think it is very important what you said, that we experience, go in the field, understand the business, the relevance, what I personally see, however, it is a lack of businesses and their willingness to actually contribute to people making these experiences, these opportunities, they are for young people particularly, not very easy to access and we know that for example in the Netherlands, there is a culture of internships, you have to do the internships before you can go to work, we have unpaid internships and people cannot afford to just work for free and if that is what you need to get access to your digital skills, then we're ending up in a huge problem. We have people who can afford to get in touch with the skills and build their competencies and we have a lot of people who simply cannot afford that.
 
If that's what it takes to get access to the skills we need, we need to fundamentally rethink how we acquire them.
 
I don't really see that businesses are rethinking their model on how they are going to educate the workforce that they will need in the future.
 
Maybe just one quick point on the fluid intelligence, and this concept of we move towards skills that are not knowledge‑based, but that are more competency based, which is something that I hear a lot, but it doesn't really get up in people's heads, because when I grow up, when people grow up, and the parents, they come from a system where everything that they learned, the competencies, they're so knowledge‑based, and nowadays we need to rethink to an entirely new system that people don't have experience with and it is tangible, we have to pay attention that we're not paying in a‑‑ in a bubble, we have to talk to the people and show them how this is changing and what impact it has for their lives.
 
>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: Thank you very much.
 
Very quickly introduce yourself, your point.
 
>> AUDIENCE: I work in Brussels in European school net. We're an NGO focusing on education and I personally work a lot with teachers but also young people. Thank you for sharing all the programs you have, and I just would like to ask the question also primarily to the people from the governments, what do you do in terms of awareness raising? These programs, they're all very great and I'm a bit concerned that the ordinary citizen may not be as aware and it is very great to present this kind of initiative here but we are kind of very selected community, and when I'm talking to young people and teachers I have the feeling it is that a lot of them are not really aware that these opportunities exist.
 
>> OLIANA SULA: Thank you.
 
>> Thank you for the question.
 
There are actually two questions, and one question, it is how do we raise awareness, and I think we have a similar problem as Portugal, we're focusing on social inclusion to really get everybody on board and so it is especially important for the 50 plus category and the illiteracy because digital illiteracy is really large, we have 2 it.5 or 4 ‑‑ up to 4 million people in the Netherlands that doesn't have basic digital skills. We have a large problem there. So we now are trying with companies also, that's basically what we're doing, it is a central approach, it is to reach out to these people. Companies will also field the negative consequences of people not being able to use digital technologies.
 
So that's one.
 
The second, it is within education, I think it is very right that you point out that the teacher is the key factor in all of this.
 
That would be a huge challenge for us within our programme, where we're currently making a digital Agenda for the education sector, and one of the key factors, it will be how do we reach this ‑‑ how do teachers cope with new technologies, and one of the main ideas that we now have, but we're working those out, it is to let them experience how technology can work for them, so it is more ‑‑ they're more ‑‑ let's say feasible, more adoptive to new technology so that they can then see what it brings them so it is easier to cope with the new technology and to make those skills and acquire the skills.
 
I think the key will be if it helps the teacher, if the technology helps the teacher, it is easier for them to acquire digital skills.
 
Then again, we're currently facing the challenges. We're not ‑‑ we're not overly there, but it will be ‑‑ it will be a key issue for probably the next 10, 20 years.
 
>> OLIANA SULA: I want to add, what he mentions, in the Hague University of applied sciences, we call it blended learning. The teachers, they're familiarized with technology, so we use, for instance, a blended learning tool that can help us or even a story telling through video making and for instance in the management programme, we have a student making videos on the policy advice rather than writing it, and we have to provide feedback also in the same way.
 
There are plenty of ways to create awareness, but I think all in all, it is about being able to be ‑‑ you mentioned very important, to use the Universities as a vehicle, as a catalyzer of this awareness. I think generally how policies are made at the moment, they're more top‑down, and we, the universities, they're on the bottom. Can we ‑‑ I think we can ‑‑ I think for my own experience, will really effectively be in use as a catalyzer of the initiative.
 
That's why you have the invitation to approach universities and to just respond on what you mentioned on the unpaid internships, absolutely I see your point and we see many students, for example, at the Hague University struggling between having to I would say even their ‑‑ I would say 40 to 50% of students struggling between working in the study at the same time. On top of that, I add the issue of unpaid internships, obviously makes an impossible question and an impossible ‑‑ yeah. Yeah. Situation. To be addressed by them.
 
However, I want to point out that there has been ‑‑ since you point out the responsibility of the private sector, there are emerging proms that I will copy and follow, such as Fellowships.
 
So Fellowships, they're used by different private sectors, the Google public policy Fellowship, it is basically a student researching on issues of ‑‑ in this case, Google, let's say on the Internet policy, and everything that underlying this umbrella term and they would be paid while doing the research and being mentored by people working in Google. So I think obviously Google has the means to be able to produce this sort of Fellowship.
 
I think it is a very good practice to be incentivized by other stakeholders in terms of facilitating the participation and the labor market while doing internships.
 
I think I'll definitely praise this kind of best practice.
 
>> I actually have two remarks on the IT illiteracy and the money.
 
Concerning the media literacy of the IT literacy: Last week I was presenting the idea of a blockchain based anti‑fake news system. Of course, it is what people call the third world country there, so I was surprised that they were even interested in this idea to be presented there at the symposium. It was basically on authentic journalism. I explained the blockchain, everything, everybody was like blockchain sounds complex. Afterwards, I asked them, so do you think you can apply this technology here and they said yes, we can.
 
I was like oh, how is this possible, I was curious.
 
Then the editor‑in‑chief of the, they said the whole thing you mention on blockchain, all of the bits and bytes you mention, it is not relevant. What's relevant is the way of thinking, the thought that you actually need to present news, information in a verifiable way, it is not about truth but verifying, so the main take away I had from that experience, it is that while we talk about IT and literacy, it is very important to look at the metaphors that we use when we communicate about technology. Because of the lack of metaphorless that are used when communicating concerning technology, a lot of people are just blocked out of the discussion because they cannot visualize what the principles are that the technology actually works with.
 
The second thing I have with the money such, it is what the young man there mentioned, it is that you shouldn't underestimate the effect that a lack of money can have on entrepreneur, especially when it involves innovation. Especially those in technology, they are only working with a lot of uncertainty. If you put additional pressure on people by not giving them enough money to fulfill their basic needs, it will only compromise their thinking capabilities, so also their mental energy and thus their intelligence.
 
Yeah.
 
I was very much advocated, not only with the organizations like Google are able to provide fellowship programs, but maybe with the universities or also maybe with municipalities, we should think about incubation proms for entrepreneurs that combat centralization actually of intelligence which is happening currently with Google.
 
>> Just a very small follow‑up on what you're saying.
 
I think someone from the Dutch government is here, he can maybe care that message to inside the government, if it wasn't spending 50 million euros on the GS summit to give the stage to politicians, global leaders to talk about Entrepreneurship, which is our thing, I think if we give that money to fellowship programs in the Netherlands, we have a better approach.
 
Please carry that message inside.
 
>> OLIANA SULA: We will carry it.
 
>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: That's the beauty of the events, when you can get together different stakeholders and ask like this, please listen to us, bring this message further.
 
We unfortunately have to finish soon. Even though we would like to keep the discussion running for hours because it is really so productive.
 
We have one short comment, please. We still need to make a few announcements.
 
>> The comment or a question?
 
>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: Whatever.
 
>> I have a very short question towards the two of you: What do you think the best strategy is to ‑‑ nowadays, there is a huge lack of data scientists and AI engineers. Especially if you look at the University of Amsterdam, there is a lot of students that are not allowed to do their AI study because ‑‑ not because they're not able to do it, because there is just a shortage of just professors that can teach them.
 
What do you think the best strategy is to fix that problem.
 
>> It is an interesting question. It is hard not to ‑‑ official just the University of Amsterdam, the professor there told us nowadays Google is taking away their stuff. The key element is tough and then they called it a moderate education ‑‑ an AI specialist, and he said Google just came and they paid him 100,000 euros just to come work with Google.
 
When we face that challenge, we cannot counter with that amount of money, we cannot compete with Google on signing bow us ins in of 100K or plus, even for moderate professors, that would be just ‑‑ it would be kind of insane actually.
 
One of the key elements will be, yeah, to enlarge the population of AI specialists, et cetera, et cetera. And then again, we have flexibility that allows for creating an extra pole of people.
 
We're in a negative, spiral towards the bottom. We haven't found yet the right answer, but if Google just pays like 100K, yeah, the government cannot compete with ‑‑ so that makes the solution very tough.
 
I don't really have a good answer right now. We're working on that and thinking about how to compete with Google and how can we make arrangements with Google that they don't or that they cooperate with Universities to teach students or how do we keep the knowledge professionals inside of universities
 
>> CATHERINE GARCIA-VAN HOOGSTRATEN: I would suggest one, I have ‑‑ I'm working in different environments around public policy. Technology.
 
A thing that's emerging is an issue of social responsibility, corporate social responsibility. One of the strategies to advocate for what you're asking, it is, yeah, they're hiring all the top level people that has the knowledge on data science. But you could use the same strategy, so meaning corporate sponsor ability, to give it back to universities, so on.
 
To advocate for that. So that is the first advice.
 
The second one, I think it is putting together the programs such as the one I presented today, that is a challenge‑based learning programme. That by itself requires the collaboration of the stakeholders. I think once you have set up this kind of collaboration that can be become more institutionalized, they're what we're trying to do in different projects that we have at the Hague University in what concerns to specifically cybersecurity, but of course, I understand, for instance, we ‑‑ at the moment we have a short project which has the data analysis expert in data science expert, and so then that's a way of borrowing knowledge and skills at least in short term that can eventually ‑‑ it has paid off in the long term.
 
>> OLIANA SULA: Thank you very much. Unfortunately we have to wrap up. As an important part of the EuroDIG messages, which we'll summarize from all of the sessions and Bev with us the reporter for our session, Ana Maria Correa, who will go through the key points that she grabbed from there, from injury discussions and it is not for the discussion of commenting from your side but more like for agreeing, not agreeing how to summarize it. If you completely disagree with something, raise your hand, let us know.
 
>> ANA MARIA CORREA: I had the very hard mission to summarize this session in four bullet points.
 
First of all, our current digital driven society requires new learning skills for building the necessary skills to meet technological innovation challenges. Policymaker, business, Civil Society shall create in cooperation a sustainable work environment, that public authorities have recognized the two challenges, including the need it of new types of experts and that digitalization has changed the entire labor market. The Netherlands has private public programs for digital literacy and have included this in secondary education. Universities should consider implementing projects that can solve practical and emerging social issues, including cybersecurity challenge and at the local and International Level.
 
Capacity building should encompass public and private partnerships in order to tackle cybersecurity workforce shortage. Under supply and under skilling the labor market has to be addressed altogether. Not as distinctive problems. Public initiatives in Portugal have been recreated to ensuring the digital competence both by technology, citizen rights and technology. Action has been taken to ‑‑ in terms of education, qualifications, specialization and research to prim prove the digital literacy.
 
You.
 
Digital literacy can improving vulnerable people's lives, Bitcoins for instance can include the refugees in the economic systems and digital identity cannot allow ‑‑ can allow refugees to have services that are denied to public authorities and other traditional system.
 
The challenge is that many refugees have no skills, the humanitarian groups, public authorities, the private sector, they should invest on the digital training of vulnerable people to improve their lives.
 
Do you all you agree with that in
 
>> OLIANA SULA: They agree with that. It is challenging. It would be great to be concluded further.
 
>> I can submit it to you directly. I feel the entire point that I was trying to address regarding the accessibility of skills building measures was left out. I feel like it is a very, very, very important point to take up especially because we're going to further the discussion based on this paper.
 
Thank you.
 
>> OLIANA SULA: Thank you for coming to the session, we had a very interactive discussion. Let's hope that some of the challenges will be resolved incomes year and I thank our speakers, our and the remote moderator, to everybody who joined and the speakers from the panel, I would like to thank as well and I wish you a very great evening here.
 
>> I want to make a quick remark, that apart from EuroDIG, there is also another initiative existence for the southeastern Europe and we had an event similar to EuroDIG a month ago and we have the messages from there already printed and ready and we had the messages on the digital skills and if you're interested in what's happening in this part of the world, please come to this table and take this message and also feel free to spread the word about that and during this initiative as well and one more remark, I would like to ask you to give a warm round of applause to my co‑moderator who has her birthday today! We congratulate you!.
 
That's it. Thank you very much.
 


''This text, document, or file is based on live transcription. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART), captioning, and/or live transcription are provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. This text, document, or file is not to be distributed or used in any way that may violate copyright law.''


[[Category:2019]][[Category:Sessions 2019]][[Category:Sessions]][[Category:Innovation and economic issues 2019]]
[[Category:2019]][[Category:Sessions 2019]][[Category:Sessions]][[Category:Innovation and economic issues 2019]]

Revision as of 11:41, 26 June 2020

20 June 2019 | 11:00-12:30 | MISSISSIPPI | Video recording | Transcription
Consolidated programme 2019 overview

Proposals assigned to this session: ID 20, 111, 193, 207 – list of all proposals as pdf

You are invited to become a member of the session Org Team! By joining an Org Team you agree to that your name and affiliation will be published at the respective wiki page of the session for transparency reasons. Please subscribe to the session mailing list and answer the email that will be send to you requesting your confirmation of subscription.

Session teaser

Labour market is facing a global skills crisis that could offset the economic promise of technological innovation. At the same time, the demand for new approaches to learning is growing as fast as never before. This session will examine the potential of new learning opportunities for building skills needed to meet innovation challenges and offer recommendations for businesses, policy makers, and job seekers among all generations aimed at creating sustainable working environment in digital age.

Session description

Rapid technological development made humanity face an unprecedented challenge of constant learning through transformation of skills and increased adaptability. To be able to catch up with innovations individuals and organizations need to continuously improve their skills and upgrade their working methods. Understanding emerging technologies and thinking beyond them is a key precondition for smooth adaptation to innovative business ideas and successful integration in emergent business models. During this session, the learning methods required to deal with skills crisis will be discussed. This session is aimed at getting to know what skills organizations are looking for when hiring new employees to be prepared for and produce innovations themselves, exploring the success and failure factors of startups, delving into governments’ initiatives in innovative education for young generation, as well as analyzing how different generations are accepting the change of innovation paradigm.

This session will gather representatives of various stakeholder groups to make the discussion as diverse and comprehensive as possible. Moreover, we expect each of you to be an active participant and contributor to the session, which will be possible due to an interactive format of fish bowl that we are going to use. Join us and let’s innovate together during the session and beyond.

Format

Fish Bowl – we will have invited speakers sitting in a semicircle and presenting their views on one of the selected issues in a short and concise manner. The rest of the group will be sitting in a bigger semicircle, or any other open format without the tables. One chair in the smaller semicircle should always be kept vacant for anyone from the audience to jump into the discussion at any point. If the empty chair is taken, one of the speakers has to leave his place to open space for new participants to join and present their views. The moderator will be facilitating the discussion, and making sure the discussion stays within the remit of the session. Due to interactive format of the session and welcoming atmosphere created by the setup, we expect all attendees to feel comfortable to join the discussion.

Further reading

  1. Technology, jobs, and the future of work, McKinsey Global Institute
  2. The Digital Labour Market, Global Opportunity Explorer
  3. How to unlock Europe’s digital growth potential, Ernst & Young
  4. Delivering digital skills: A guide to preparing the workforce for an inclusive digital economy, Readie
  5. Strategies for the New Economy: Skills as the Currency of the Labour Market, World Economic Forum
  6. Weconomics: ‘Work Less, Achieve More’

People

Focal Points

  • Olga Kyryliuk, The Influencer Platform
  • Oliana Sula, University "Aleksander Moisiu" Durres/Estonian Business School

Organising Team (Org Team) List them here as they sign up.

  • Erklina Denja, Magnific shpk Finance Accounting
  • Anne Joldersma
  • Artemia-Dimitra Korovesi
  • Diona Kusari
  • Sabrina Vorbau, European Schoolnet

Key Participants

  • Catherine Garcia-van Hoogstraten, Data Governance, Technology, Cybersecurity, Public Sect. Digitalisation at THUAS/ Global Forum on Cyber Expertise AB member
    Bridging policy silos in the digital field, working on cutting edge technology-related legal and policy issues. Lecturer & Researcher in Data Governance, Technology, Cybersecurity and Public Sector Digitalisation at Centre of Expertise Cybersecurity-The Hague University of Applied Sciences, Public Sector Digitalisation consultant and Advisory Board member at the Global Forum of Cyber Expertise(GFCE). In addition, Cyber Security and Internet Governance Expert with the World Economic Forum Expert Network and Senior Consultant with the Multilateral Diplomacy Program- United Nations Institute for Training and Research(UNITAR).
  • Ruben Brave, CEO at Entelligence BV
    Ruben Brave is a Media professional and TMT-entrepreneur with over 25 years of purebred networking experience. Since 2004 founder of business incubator Entelligence (www.entelligence.nl) for pre-seed funding, (valorisation)mentoring and coaching regarding start-ups that concern themselves with Online Media, ICT & automation, Health & Life Long Learning. More info & connect with Ruben via https://about.me/rubenbrave
  • Sofia Rasgado, Coordinator at Portuguese Safer Internet Centre (SIC)
    Sofia Rasgado, coordinator at Portuguese Safer Internet Centre, took a degree in Sociology and a master’s degree in Public Health. Since 2015, she takes part in the “National ICT and Society Network”, which aims digital inclusion and to increase the digital literacy in Portugal and she is also involved in how a multistakeholder approach maximizes public policies related to ICT and society, namely on how to address challenges, find solutions, planning and evaluating. Currently she is part of the team responsible for implementing the INCODE2030 National Program.
  • Tey El-Rjula, Co-founder & CEO at Tykn
    Tey's story is an unlikely one. Labeled as The Invisible Man at the age of 5 to becoming literally one in the Netherlands 25 years later. He is an early adopter of Bitcoin, pioneering the use of blockchain to break financial and identity barriers. Tey started a tech4good company that helps others like him. A journey that ultimately led him to the realization of his life's mission: turning invisible people into invincible ones. Through his work as a CEO, writer, speaker, and a holder of MSc in Digital Currencies and Blockchain Technology he is determined to become a billionaire. Not in terms of money but in positively touching the lives of billions of people.
  • Thijs van Reekum, Policy Advisor at Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs
    Within the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy responsible for the digital skills policy, and supports the cabinet-wide Dutch Digitalisation Strategy.
  • Alexander Gunkel, Managing Director & Founder at Space4Good.
    Alexander Gunkel is a serial entrepreneur using space technology for social and environmental good. He co-founded 3 impact ventures: "Skytree" which invented a CO2 recycling process to reduce global CO2 emissions, "RoadEO" which is developing a global road quality monitoring and prediction platform to improve road safety and comfort and "Space4Good" an innovation lab and venture generator using latest developments from the space industry to tackle SDG related challenges. Before starting his entrepreneurial career Alexander studied mechanical engineering and business administration and worked as a project management trainee at the European Space Agency.

Moderator

  • Oliana Sula, Lecturer at University "Aleksander Moisiu" Durres/PhD Candidate in Management at Estonian Business School
  • Olga Kyryliuk, PhD, CEO & Founder at The Influencer Platform

Remote Moderator

Trained remote moderators will be assigned on the spot by the EuroDIG secretariat to each session.

Reporter

  • Ana Maria Correa, Geneva Internet Platform

Reporters will be assigned by the EuroDIG secretariat in cooperation with the Geneva Internet Platform. The Reporter takes notes during the session and formulates 3 (max. 5) bullet points at the end of each session that:

  • are summarised on a slide and presented to the audience at the end of each session
  • relate to the particular session and to European Internet governance policy
  • are forward looking and propose goals and activities that can be initiated after EuroDIG (recommendations)
  • are in (rough) consensus with the audience

Current discussion, conference calls, schedules and minutes

See the discussion tab on the upper left side of this page. Please use this page to publish:

  • dates for virtual meetings or coordination calls
  • short summary of calls or email exchange

Please be as open and transparent as possible in order to allow others to get involved and contact you. Use the wiki not only as the place to publish results but also to summarize the discussion process.

Messages

  • Our current digital-driven society requires new learning skills for building the necessary competence to meet technological innovation challenges. Policymakers, businesses, and civil society should co-operate to create a sustainable working environment. Using the Netherlands as a case study, Dutch public authorities have recognised two challenges: (1) the need for new types of experts, and (2) that digitalisation has changed the entire labour market. The Netherlands fosters public-private partnerships to address digital literacy and have included the topic in primary and secondary education.
  • Universities should consider implementing projects that can solve practical and emerging social issues, including cybersecurity challenges at both the local and international level. Capacity building should encompass private and public partnerships in order to tackle the cybersecurity workforce shortage. Under-supply and under-skilling in the labour market have to be addressed together, and not as separate problems.
  • Public initiatives in Portugal have been created to enhance digital competences and address the challenges posed by technology to citizens’ rights, employment, and knowledge. Action has been taken to in terms of inclusion, education, qualification, specialisation, and research to improve digital literacy.
  • Digital literacy can improve vulnerable people’s lives. Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, could include refugees in the economic system. Digital identities could give refugees access to services that are denied by public authorities and traditional analogical systems. The challenge is that many refugees have no digital skills. Humanitarian groups, public authorities, and the private sector should invest on the digital training of vulnerable people to improve their lives.


Find an independent report of the session from the Geneva Internet Platform Digital Watch Observatory at https://dig.watch/sessions/transforming-skills-meet-innovation-challenges.

Video record

https://youtu.be/GzW6rA-T0qM

Transcript

Provided by: Caption First, Inc., P.O. Box 3066, Monument, CO 80132, Phone: +001-800-825-5234, www.captionfirst.com


This text, document, or file is based on live transcription. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART), captioning, and/or live transcription are provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. This text, document, or file is not to be distributed or used in any way that may violate copyright law.


>> MODERATOR: Good morning, everyone. We'll give people a few more minutes and then we'll start. Maybe 2 more minutes.

>> OLIANA SULA:good morning, everyone.

Thank you for coming to our session. Transforming skills to meet innovation challenges, Workshop Number 5 following under the category of innovation and economic issues.

Today, we will be your moderators of the session, it is Oliana Sula and Olga Kyryliuk. Actually it is not the first time that we are coorganizing a session on digital skills. We organized last year a session about digital skills in general, but this year, the focus of our session, it is more how to relate skills to the challenges of innovation and as well to the environment, the dynamic environment that changes all the time, and employees, employers, companies, entrepreneurs, business, they have to face constantly a lot of challenges. So at our session, we aim to bring to the table different perspectives from different stakeholders. And we want to bring a global perspective, Netherlands, they're the host country, let's see what they're doing here and have best practice and see the challenges that they're facing.

Olga, furthermore, she'll introduce the format of our session and we'll kindly introduce to you our speakers.

>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

Now you have a bit of an idea of what's going to happen in terms of the contents and we will share with you also how we'll be organizing this session in terms of the format. As you can see, the speakers are sitting in front of you and they can also see you ‑‑ you have a spare Chair in between them. This is the Chair for any of you at any point of our discussion once the speakers will give their brief introductory statements and speeches and explain what they're doing, how they see, what skills are needed nowadays in the labor market and any of you can just join the row, take the free seat and be the speaker yourself and share your perspective on the issue that we'll be discussing here today for an hour and a half, and basically just feel free to join and to share your opinions and perspectives, and also I will kindly ask if there is somebody from the remote participation, to just give us a sign and see where you can share with us the comment, the question if it is coming in, and at this point let's give the floor to our speakers and see whether digital skills indeed create opportunities, is this the challenges, the innovations, and this whole framework is changing whether we can't anymore use any old skills, whether we really need to be permanently reeducated to meet the requests coming from the labor markets and our first speaker.

>> OLIANA SULA: Yes.

Our first speaker, if I am not pronouncing it wrong, it is Thigs van Reekum from the Minister of Climate Affairs from Netherlands, and he'll tell you a bit more about what they're doing in their ministry and what are the challenges that they're facing as well as the best practices that we can share from Netherlands.

>> THIJS VAN REEKUM: Thank you.

I'm Thigs van Reekum, indeed.

Within the Ministry of Economic Affairs I'm responsible for the digital skills policy, and so we don't really have a responsibility as a ministry. The department, it is responsible for education, and we have a social affairs department that is responsible for the learning and we're stimulating the digital skills to enhance skills on the labor market and also to get the right people at the labor market and so we actually see two major challenges, one is that we need a lot of new experts, new digital technologies like AI, IoT, Big Data analysis, challenges us with right experts. We need new types of experts, we need new curriculum, new innovation in universities and so that's one challenge that we see and another challenge, it is that digitalization, it is transforming the whole of the labor market. Digital skills are needed if you're working in education, in that sector itself, whether you're working in logistics, you have self‑driving cars forks that will transform the whole logistics department.

We see a lot of challenges that digitalization puts us in front of.

So one of the key challenges actually is that we don't know which skill set is really needed at the labor market.

We don't really know what the labor market will bring us. We only know that what we need at this current point. we can look at approximately 1 year in advance to see what kind of experts we need, what skills we need, different types of sectors. We don't ‑‑ we cannot predict the future labor market. If we look at, for example, how digital skills have changed throughout the last ten years, for example, yeah, it is highly unlikely that we're able to predict 2, 3 years in advance.

So we have ‑‑ we have a general approach, first we need to put the basics in order so we need to stimulate digital skills or more general skills, and in the primary, the secondary education. So we're currently updating our curriculum for the primary, secondary education and digital literacy, it is one of the prominent new topics within the new curriculum.

Secondly, we are ‑‑ when it comes to education, we see a lot of challenges there. Well, jobs are changing, and the Dutch approach, it is basically to stimulate public‑private partnerships. We enhance stimulating companies and universities to work together to update the curriculum to innovate and to really also help let companies help universities to update their curriculum. We cannot predict it, some companies do know what expertise they need, and we will try to, yeah, really enforce it, the corporation between vocation education institutions and universities of applied sciences to work together to see what is needed in that current curriculum.

Thirdly, probably one of the most important challenges that every country faces, that's lifelong learning. Throughout all of Europe we see countries struggling with stimulating lifelong learning filtering in their country. Also in the Netherlands.

We also struggle with stimulating people from approximately 40 and above to keep them learning because the tendency, the culture is I don't want to go back to school. So we have a hard nut to crack in lifelong learning debate, and maybe some of the key challenges, key solutions, it will be that we have some regional, local initiatives that work really good and how do we make those local initiatives work for the whole sector, the logistics, we have a good Example of logistics. How do we translate that one particular initiative to the old country or to the old sector. So these are merely the main solutions that we see as a phasing of the transforming skills in the labor market.

>> OLIANA SULA: Thank you for your point.

We'll have the occasion during the session to develop more of these points.

Now we will introduce our other speaker.

>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: We had such great speakers in our panel today, so I'm kind of eager to introduce them one by one. On the other side, I want them to speak more because I'm so curious to listen to their perspectives. Now I want to give the floor to Catherine Garcia‑van Hoogstraten, she's a researcher in data governance technology and in cybersecurity and public sector digitalization at the Hague University of applied sciences. She's also public sector digital consultant and advisory global forum on cyber expertise, and recently she was a part of a very interesting initiative which is the research challenge competition and please share with us a bit more how it looked like and how you came to this idea.

>> CATHERINE GARCIA-VAn HOOGSTRATEN: Right.

Thank you for having me. I thank to the EuroDIG also, the Internet governance, this is a perfect place to discuss this specific topic and to have all of us sitting together to see what are the potential solutions.

I would just ‑‑ we conducted a study, conducted some sort of a survey with our members, first of all, the Global Forum of Cyber Expertise, it is a public‑private partnership between different public and private stakeholders ranging from world economic forum, World Bank, Council of Europe, all the way to different companies such as Microsoft, you name it.

So the main idea of the forum is to create a cyber capacity building. In the aim of creating this cyber capacity building we have divided our work in different working groups. One of the working groups where I'm supporting and providing advice as an advisory board member is the one on cyber workforce development.

In April we issue a white paper, and I'm going to only share one of the main conclusions that actually links to the project I'm dealing with the Hague University of applied sciences, a main conclusion, it was that there is indeed ‑‑ I think this is not new, that you have heard, read, discussed this before, there is a very obvious cybersecurity skills shortage. However, when discussing this with our members, and through the survey, we have realized that basically all the policies that are aiming to put in the solution is distinguished between two categories, the first one is to increase the pipeline of cybersecurity professionals, this is called under supply. The distinguishing is between those seeking to increase the candidates, this is called under skilling. So one of the potential solutions we found out, it is eventually that there is a correlation of these two different under skilling and up skilling, it correlates to the lack of professional experience especially of graduates and the absence of entry level opportunities.

Taking one of these conclusions in account, one of these conclusions that is drafted for the paper and having the fantastic opportunity to work at the Hague University of applied sciences, that's based here in the Hague, I had the chance to work there and to be able to connect with one important public stakeholder, the Dutch defraud agency, they came to us, they asked us, hey, we see that there is a skill shortage on financial cybercrimes. Can we hold ‑‑ should we jointly organize a challenge programme together? That's how we came together to organize the Fiat research challenge programme.

Eight weeks, it provided us enough time to work in two teams, some of them, they were sitting here and one of the participants, they're sitting right around the table, information security management, law, European studies, you name it, and two teams working for eight weeks doing research on two topics pertaining to financial cybercrimes, one was on services and the other one was on centralized change platforms.

Topics that are in itself problematic for the public sector stakeholder, however, the combination of putting together multidisciplinary team and what we have talked about, at applied science perspective, it gives enough venue and time for being able to put in practice these skills, but also to harness softer skills such as teamwork, critical analysis, collaborative skills.

The results were we have to say fantastic. We did have a winner team of this challenge programme, it was by the way my team! By no surprise! I'm not only very proud of them but very proud of the outcome. They provided a research‑based recommendations to the fiat. And they were very pleased with the results in this sense and so this is a way to also connect the underlying white paper with the practice. I think this is one of the ‑‑ one of the main triggers and the main drivers as well, most importantly, of what we should be all doing at Universities. We should be able to not only connect, but to sit around the table and jointly indeed be able to put together projects that can solve the social issues, challenges, not only in what concerns cybersecurity bunny other societal challenges that are around the international global, International Level.

So I'm very proud of having been able to participate here, and obviously there is a lot of data we are drawing from this research challenge in itself. So I don't know if you have the link for ‑‑ it is a one‑minute video I think that can show you the main features of the research challenge programme we have at the Hague University of Applied Sciences.

>> OLIANA SULA: Can we ask technical support to show the video on the screen?

>> CATHERINE GARCIA-VAn HOOGSTRATEN: That's the story in one minute.

Please, if you are very interested to ‑‑ well, gather with us and be able to also jointly organize any other projects, anyone around the table, you're more than welcome to approach me and talk about it. Yeah. Go around any opportunities, any other opportunities.

Thank you.

>> OLIANA SULA: For me, it sounds so interesting and I don't even know more ‑‑ I would like that we have some similar projects being implemented in our countries, in our region. It feels that the Netherlands is just the perfect place to be in terms of this private public partnership. I remember when we went with you last year, you were ‑‑ speaking about this directly, I was thinking, okay, this is something that we have talked about in theory, I didn't really understand that this could be that much implemented in practice, thank you for this fresh perspective.

>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: After having two interesting representatives from very two important stakeholders such as government and then academia, and especially the academia perspective, which is my field as well, and talking about how to ‑‑ how we can make more interdisciplinary projects and to increase this cooperation between different actors, now we wanted in this session to have more practical perspective on skills and to have maybe business point of view or from a point of view or an approach from the business sector, so we decided to invite our next speaker, which is Ruben Brave. He is a member of the Internet society chapter in the Netherlands, founder and make media great again and a business incubator intelligence.

>> RUBEN BRAVE: Do we have to sit down or ‑‑ everybody is sitting down.

Dear organizing teams, participants, thank you for inviting me to your forum. In my speech I tried to connect the dots with my personal experience, trades, skills when coping with innovation challenges and mythology according to Starwars. I had the pleasure, honoring being Part of the national telecom provider and the and also the largest IT related publishing company in the Netherlands. Excuse me for my voice. I have a bit of hay fever. It sounds a bit strange!.

Also I was involved in the publishing of the largest publisher of magazines in the world.

Actually to play a role, a key role in their application of Internet technology and related innovations.

So as I was entirely captivated by innovations, I decided in 2009 to convert my management company to a so‑called business incubator where I match technology off the shelf from knowledge institutions such as universities or institutes like the Netherlands organization for applied science research with the market. Our various technological marketing has had varying degrees of success. Still if you have to provide financial room in 2013 for long‑term sabbatical. During my sabbatical, I not only had the opportunity to spend more time with my family and social network, but also to explore other forums of capital such as capital and spiritual capital often with the intention of leaving a diverse legacy for our daughters, the next generation.

This phase, which I sometimes jokingly call my business withdraw phase from the business world gave me the opportunity to think deeply about the balance between the various forms of capital, this phase has transformed me.

Last year at the end of my sabbatical I was deeply moved when my best friend made marriage plans to his Russian love and asked me to perform at their marriage as a special civil servant at least for a day.

As I didn't really know his wife to be, the risk for unbalanced speech was real. Desperately I was seeking a suitable link between my good friend and future wife, between a very well‑known world and the yet unknown, bridging the gap. Luckily, they both love movies. That became my starting point and soon I stumbled upon a framework that not only was good for both of them, about you also provided insight into the skills needed to cope with life‑sized changes, the monomyth or hero journey, a key element in the mythology. The hero's journey, it is the common template of a broad category of it.

Alees and Lure involving a hero or heroine that goes on an adventure, the myth narrative started in 1871 and eventually, the hero Mythacus influenced and has inspired George Lucas, creator of Starwars. So the hero is special, but rarely a perfect person although it seems they possess some secret or special powers. The hero embarks on a quest, faces challenges, dangers, is victorious after a crisis and in the end comes home. Changed. Transformed. The hero has departure, initiation and three, return so departure refers to the call to adventure, crossing the threshold, withdraw from the community for meditation and preparation, and initiation relates to trials and quests and going to the underworld of the metaphor for the subconscious and return of the resurrection, the rebirth, returning with the master of two worlds..

Let's see how to use this pattern in the light of this session's theme. As one of the methods of tricks that you often use as an incubator when introducing technology is to copy and paste methods from one area into a different area. For example, you imitate the model systems and elements of nature for the purpose of solving complex human problems. For instance, aircraft wing design, flight techniques are inspired by birds and bats and that's inspired the flight.

Thus, how could the hero's journey framework, a transformative journey that a hero and entrepreneur, an employee undergoes, can give direction to the skills, personality traits and learning methods that shed some light on the ask EL subgroup needed for the 21st Century. What inspiring overlaps are there within country plans human research knowledge, technology applications and the hue he row's journey.

‑‑ hero's journey.

As we see our company, intelligence, as a testing ground for action learning, that is learning by doing, experiencing, combined with systematic reflection on it, but also action research, transformative change through the simultaneous process or taking action and doing research which are linked together by critical reflection. We had opportunity to look into the previous failures and pivots, including the development of the two recent the startups we make use of scientific knowledge and crowdsourcing to combat misinformation of fake news which resulted in a blockchain base transparent and structured system for actionable suggestions and annotations, from a community pull of knowledge and critical thinking and diverse readers. We have a first partner, and in both cases, intelligence appears to be the coat driver, a lot of things compare the workplace success and intelligence, the latter is often considered not to be measured. So certainly fluid intelligence, the caps tip to quickly master unknown thinking models seems promising.

The curiosity, the new thinking scheme, it seems relevant for a firm departure for the world but our incubation practice showed something else, appearing there was conflicts in introduction of innovation resulting in severe irritation and resistance. There was a trial that forces us to go in the deeper world of meaning that new technology confronts us with.

The master key to finally pass all mental phases in uncertain context that often join innovation seems to lie in emotions, not in the sense of instincts but in the sense of motivations.

Motives, that determine our behavior, within a group.

Emotional intelligence is mentioned more often nowadays, but it is emotion stability as an anchor between events in the outside world and the inner personal world that seems to guarantee the sustainability of our practice.

Most appropriate behavior for suitable cooperation, it is in that case the result of a conscience inner experience and mental reflection on the entire situation so holistic reflection.

Designing and using technology encourages an inclusive process which we're constantly encouraged to think consciously about our own perception and about the perception of others, taking the space and time to reflect about the forces within ourselves, outside of ourselves, and the bridge that we as individuals can or sometimes must build in the case of unknown challenges, the application or adoption of technology.

So that together we can write a new narrative.

Thank you for your attention.

>> OLIANA SULA: Thank you very much, Ruben for your point. a very inspiring speech. I would suggest that you made a great parallelism between the nice story you told in the beginning and how actually are ‑‑ how it is working ‑‑ how to deal with all the applied skills and action learning and action research in the field of Entrepreneurship specifically.

Now we will pass to the next speaker which Olga will introduce very kindly.

>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: We also have with us Sofia Rasgado, who is a coordinator of the Portuguese Safer Internet Center and it is really interesting for us to know your perspective on how you see what skills are needed nowadays and how we can keep and adapt to the ever fasting it change in technological development.

>> SOFIA RASGADO: Thank you. And I'm here on behalf of the Internet Center, but I'll present the Portuguese programme called Encode 2030. I think it is most suitable for what we're discussing here today.

So regarding the Portuguese programme, Encode 2030 national ‑‑ it is a national digital competence initiative. We live in a world that increasingly relies on digital technologies and where online electronic devices are the most common form of interaction creating a more resilient society involving developing a new competent, particularly digital ones which are constantly changing and evolving.

Encode 2030, it is an integrated public policy initiative to enhance digital competencies.

Some of you may think that Encode 2030, it is an economy for code but it isn't.

It would be too minimalistic. In initiative, code, it is for competencies, the skills, D means digital, and E, it stands for Europe. So to make the link with Europe fast we uses in eCommerce, eHealth, eRights and so on. Of course 2030 is the period of the programme.

Therefore, with this, we intend to cover areas and look at what's already been done. In this sense, all of the ministries involved, they're boosted by the prime ministry. We have together working the Ministry of Science and technology and higher education, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, the Ministry of Planning and infrastructures, the presidency and modernization and the Presidents of the council of ministries, besides the different public bodies involved encode 2030 brings also together and encourages the collaboration between people with different experience and knowledge from the private sector, academia, Civil Society.

And what are the challenges for Portugal in the area of digital competences? We can identify three areas. Citizenship, employment, knowledge.

Digital competencies, they're essential for both exercising full citizenship and to facilitate employability. By meeting the needs of an increasing digitalization of the labor market, the more skilled working population gives rise to more new jobs as well as the markets and products leading to more competitive and robust economic activities.

Digital competence, it is also very important for the development of a critical, multifaceted awareness and to promote social well‑being and inclusion.

At the same time, the country itself must be an active agent in the global effort to produce new scientific computing knowledge and develop the capacity to manage and use large amount of information to ensure a better position in Europe and the world.

We cannot wait to find out what the new technologies will be, my argument is that we have to be part of their creation.

So to achieve the goals of this programme, we designed five action lines.

So action line 1, it is about inclusion, making sure that the whole population has equal access to digital technologies to obtain information, communicate and interact with others.

The second, the action line, it is about education, educating the younger population by simulating and reinforcing digital literacy and digital skills at all levels of schooling and as part of life‑long learning.

Action line 3, qualification, it is about qualifying the working population, by providing them with the knowledge they need to become a part of a labor market that relies heavily on digital skills. Action line 4, promoting specialization in digital technologies and to improving employability and to create higher added value in the economy.

The last one, it is about investigation.

Providing the conditions for the production ‑‑ for the production of new knowledge and an active participation in international RND networks and programs.

So for each action line we have specific target audience. For inclusion, we talk about ‑‑ it is for the target group of people over 55 years old, low education level and vulnerable people. The second line, education, it is for students, teachers, trainers, other agents of education and training system.

The qualification, it is the qualification of mid‑level technicians, qualification and retraining of the unemployed, and of public service employees.

Specialization, it is to promote specialization in the academia, the graduation, master degrees, Ph.D., advanced ICT training courses and the last line, investigation, it is for researchers. Therefore, the Portugal encode 2030 initiative as a broad scope in the drive towards digital development starting with the promotion of digital inclusion and literacy, educating the young generations from an early age, qualifying the active population and specialization of the graduate for advanced digital jobs and to turn the country into a new contributor to the new digital developments.

And to monetarize and evaluate the achievement of the programme goals was creating ‑‑ was created and observatory for digital competence and just to give you an idea about the governance of the programme, it involves three permanent bodies, a permanent forum for digital competence, responsible for gathering and coordination from a range of private, public companies and institutions to ensure widespread mobilization towards encode 2030.

A coordination structure, it oversees the general lines of action and initiative as a whole.

Promoting and coordinating the activities in each action line to guarantee a common focus and purpose updating the general and specific goals and objectives.

And a technical Secretariat that monitors, records and reports on the implementation of all the planned activities, in close articulation with the coordination structure and the forum for digital competencies.

This is an idea of what in Portugal we're doing about raising digital competence and skills.

Thank you.

>> OLIANA SULA: Thank you very much.

Really interesting to know what's happening in tore countries and what we can borrow from you as the best practices examples to be implemented in the countries of our region, which is South Eastern Europe. Now moving to the next speaker

>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: We are lucky to have on our panel two speakers that are really ‑‑ or three maybe, that are really from ‑‑ they're entrepreneurs, they have their own companies and that they have really interesting stories to tell us.

Not that the other stories were not interesting, of course.

First, I want to introduce Alexander Gunkel. He's managing director and founder of space 4 Good. You can tell us even more about your story and then how ‑‑ how you see this thing of relating skills needed for entrepreneurs nowadays. Especially your case, what skills were necessary at the beginning, and then now how do you feel about this for the future especially.

>> ALEXANDER GUNKEL: We have a button up experience and I'm really happy to have this discussion with the people creating the policy and working on a programme level here.

My personal experience, basically I want to bring it from being a misfit, being an entrepreneur, a manager, also being a coach. I think all of those things sum how are connected in the topic of skills, specifically the digital skills.

I personally studied mechanical engineering in business in Germany and this very, very knowledge‑based approach. Extreme in this case, very much like that. I realized in the studies I just ‑‑ it didn't fit with me. I powered through, I didn't quit. Maybe I should have. It just didn't work.

I actually discovered in other countries something which resonated much better for me, one was South Africa, one was here in the Netherlands. Just saying that Netherlands here, you are really doing a good job, kind of teaching a I plied skills at your University and also applied universities and this kind of opened up this whole new dimension of saying it is not just about learning from books, kind of just looking at videos, but actually really working on cases, working as a team, really doing something, what is worthwhile, what can be directly applied? In this case, I had found my passion for Entrepreneurship here in the Netherlands, through a programme that was stimulating this ‑‑ yeah, this ‑‑ this spring of new ideas of young people trying to innovate and technical context.

So I started to work in the space agency, a knowledge‑based organization, after a year I realized I'm just doing the same mistake over and over again. Then in 2012 to 2013 I decided I have to start my own company. Indeed I did. Now it is three different one, all using space technology for social environment impacts and what the interesting thing is about startups, startups operate in fields where they shouldn't be a lot of knowledge already. They shouldn't be like a lot of Intellectual Property available for you to fall back into knowledge‑based approaches. It is really just about the skills, about the personality, about motivation to make things happen.

That's where I started to feel comfortable as an individual. That's also where I had to transform myself also to become a manager to find cofounder, employees, how do you find them? Not by again looking and seeing the knowledge‑based experts operating in new fields where this knowledge is not existing yet, I really wanted to disrupt and innovate. You look actually at personalities of the people whom maybe resonates with you, who are just up for challenges, that may have studied something completely else and if they convince me in one, two hours, that they're going to do whatever it takes to acquire a ‑‑ to have new skills and develop this, those are the employees you're looking for specifically with this data. Eventually it matures. After one, two hours, you figure out what's the market, what's the products we have to develop, you have the reputation and you start to make the processes.

I think that's where you maybe start working again.

It is more with the combination of skills and knowledge.

The funny thing is, you know, it is not only a true forum for startups but big corporates, let's talk about Phillips. At one point they started a startup, but now like multinationals, thousands were working there, and that's ‑‑ they realized that they have to continue innovating. They have been blindfolded by a digital disruption and they realized they're not equipped for new challenges, they're being threatened by startups now, just Cherry‑picking the interesting market segments and you realize you have to do something, that we have to innovate startups. There is a whole term with this startup methodologies that now big corporates are acquiring and what they're trying to learn and understand, it is that there are different time spans in innovations, and the time span where you discover, where you learn new things and there is the time afterwards where you just want to scale, where you want to create processes.

That's something that now needs to be implemented, needs to be learned in this organization to figure out and what stage are we and all of the different stages will require different skills, they require different tools and they also require different mindsets. That's kind of maybe the key set, we have to figure out, you know, where are we right now? Is it disruptive, new territory? Which is new to the country, new to the market, new to the sector, or is this something that we already figured out and now we have to just excel and start building our workforce accordingly.

So three, four things, you know, first on the standing, you know. Understanding, where are we now, what do we need to do? Awareness creation, it is not sitting here, discussing this, but this whole other entrepreneur that doesn't have time now to be here, or like other corporates that they're doing the day‑to‑day business and we have to reach them. We have to still educate them, we've to educate them this applied learning and with trainings and with workshops, and also with the internships.

We're really having students from applied universities from University here from the Netherlands and around the world kind ever joining our startup, helping us, but working on this actually, actually helping ourselves.

>> OLIANA SULA: Thank you very much, Alex, for the great speech.

As well, I was happy, I saw some young people smiling when you mentioned about the relation that skills can be learned at school, at University or not, and they see always the same exterior precious in the world, I teach as well.

You will have the occasion to participate after our next speaker.

So now we'll end up with a very interesting story I guess, Olga will tell a bit more and then our speaker, of course.

>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: We have with us today Tey El‑Rjula. He's a cofounder and CEO at Tykn. For me personally, this is a very interesting story. You will have a chance to hear now. I will just say because I myself was working a few years in the humanitarian sector and for me, at some point, when I was just starting it I was thinking this is so much humanitarian work and I just understood that this is the repetition of the same working methods in every country where the humanitarian is coming and this is the emergency reaction to the means that they're there. Many people are still suffering from those problems and challenges that they have in those countries which with have not been solved for years. When I heard about this initiative, I thought wow, this is so great and had this is what we can do with the technology. Please share this story with us and with the rest of the audience. I thought this is really amazing, this example of what we can do for the people that are in most need of the help.

>> TEY EL-RJULA: To pick up where you and where we apply digital cooperation, digital skills, it is not in the corporate sector, not in the government, we apply it in the humanitarian industry. Why are we doing this? What is my background and how did all this start? I will say it is all by chance, by destiny. My background, I'm a software trainer, so for the past 15 years my job is to study software and to give it training to corporates, governments, banks, on how to use that software.

I focused on customer relationship management softwares, one, I was working in Dubai and I started ‑‑ I was one of the founding members of the telecom company there, life took me to the Netherlands and in 2010 I came here to continue my work as a software trainer and in 20 it 14 my contract was not renewed and the IND, the immigration services asked me to leave the country and go back where I came from.

Now, I cannot go to Dubai, to any other country, in 2014, I couldn't travel. I'm a Syrian national, so I carry the Syrian national, I have a Syrian passport. In 2014, the climax of the Civil War in Syria and I simply cannot leave the airport because my passport is expiring in 6 months. The only chance for me to stay in the Netherlands was to apply for asylum.

I felt it would be a short process, live in the country, I have a tax number, a dog, a house, but it ended up to finish in two and a half years. For two and a half years I'm moving between five refugee camps in the Netherlands and I met a lot of Syrians, more than 70,000 Syrians who shared the same experience as me that we're moving and with a piece of paper, given by the organization that helps refugees in the Netherlands, and as I can't have access to any type of service. I can't get a bank account, cannot get insurance, I cannot get ‑‑ go to school because simply I'm on a waiting list among 150,000 applications where immigration is deciding will you stay or no, will you leave the country.

There was my first interaction with what digitally can mean for us. And us, I say as refugees, because everything around us is based on paper. There is Facebook, linked in, social media, that's digital. There is a big gap between both.

The gap exists because we as refugees want to create that gap. We want to protect our privacy.

So refugees, they do not post their full name on Facebook. They do not talk about their families on Facebook. It is all ‑‑ you know, it is anonymous names. My real name, I'm known here as Tey.

That point, it made me think that in the digital age that we're in, we're missing one important factor, which is the privacy and security. While I was sitting at the camp I'm watching how trump is getting the seat as President and if we look at why did this happen, well, they were simply mining our data. They were figuring out through the Facebook model who is a Democrat, who is a republican, what do you like, what you don't like, they were tolerating it the campaign ‑‑ targeting the campaigns on the specific set of people that would be voting for Trump. We all realize that the biggest threat for our democracy today, the biggest threat for our own existence, it is the data, it is the social media, it is the centralized systems that is mining and looking at all of our data and using it for their own benefits and their own purposes.

Now we have Libra, a type of money built on Facebook. So we're not only giving our data, our personal data, no, now we have to give also our financial data. So Mark Zuckerberg, one person, he's not going to know about who is your father, mother, sister, what time did you check in at the hotel, what did you eat? He'll know how much you paid.

How much money you have. Who are you transacting with? To go back in history, in World War II, the Hague suffered from a massive ‑‑ it is not -- it is a disaster. In World War II, when the Germans, when the Nazis were roaming around the city, they were able to identify every house if there is a Jewish person in it, yes or no, every house in the Hague simply because of the technology, the punch card machine. That punch card was a machine used for civil purposes to connect houses together, to build a postal system, one person, they were able to look into that record keeper and see he's Jewish, non-Jewish. In the digital age, centralization of data is a big threat for everyone in this room not only for refugees but literally for everyone. This is where I thought, okay, we can use technology to protect citizens, to protect the privacy of the citizens, to protect the security of NGOs because in the whole business chain, whether you talk about corporates, governments, NGOs, the humanitarian sector, it’s the most vulnerable sector when it comes to cybersecurity.

I think you can agree with me on that.

There I was in a city, I lived four years in the Netherlands, all I had known was Amsterdam, after this, I was traveling and was introduced to new cities. I'm sitting there in this city, I'm looking for the past six months, I'm eating the same food, how can I change that? I asked the refugee organizers, we can Cook, can we go to the kitchen, Cook ourselves, we can feed each other? No, there is too much risk in that. Maybe you will burn your hand, fall, you will cut your finger, you are not ensured. Okay. You have a point..

But there is a website in the Netherlands, they accept by the coins, and I had bit coins on the phone, as a software trainer, I was an early adopter, so I paid for pizza using Bitcoin and it was delivered to the camp. Now why this is important, as a refugee, as I said, you're excluded from the services. You cannot have even a PayPal account, you cannot have a credit card.

So that technology, it broke the financial barriers put around societies and human race since the early dawn of human beings.

Today we are financially free. I do not have to wait for a bank to include me, I do not have to wait for a credit card company to include me. I do it myself.

Now that doing yourself, it is a new skill that didn't exist before.

It requires a lot of training, which all the panelists talk about, invest in the human, not in the technology. Let the human knowhow to set a good password, then you don't need a blockchain based cybersecurity startup.

If we know that setting cookies when I get the cookie on my website, if I take the three seconds to click that and put it to basic, I protect my privacy.

Then I don't need a whole new system to protect the privacy of people by Tykn. Here is the dilemma, do you want to work on the long term, invest in the human? You want to have shortcuts and build the short‑term solutions.

After my experience in Tykn in two years, we thought yeah, bring digital identities to refugees and open an online marketplace for them to transact, buy, sell, to do these things, we can bring digital healthcare, digital money, we can bring all of these amazing services. Digital literacy in the refugee camps is very low. I hit a wall.

We have 1.2 billion women around the world that cannot read and write.

That is a big problem.

I took a step back from pushing blockchain as the silver bullet for all of these problems that we're facing, which it can be if we know how to use it, if there is 70,000 days in their experience in the digital world in the Netherlands, yes, we can ‑‑ we have the best solution out there the.

I have a really good solution where people cannot use it. Simply because the digital skills and literacy, they're missing.

So in the end, it doesn't mean we have to stop. It is just we don't do ‑‑ I don't do pilots anymore, I don't do small projects anymore, we focus on really investing in the human and changing his ‑‑ improving his digital skills.

Hopefully this will be ‑‑ this information that we took today, I'll be taking it to Turkey by the end of this month where with the Turkmenistanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the UNDP, the Gates Foundation, many other startups, they'll be entering the refugee camps in Turkey with the approval of the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Turkey and see how can we help those vulnerable people, the refugees and improve their live, not only for them, but for the host country as well.

Then we can show that refugees are assets to the country and I can show that I don't wait for permission from anyone to innovate, I just simply innovate without permission.

Thank you.

>> OLIANA SULA: Thank you very much. That was very much inspiring and it gave a lot of food for thought and thinking of the projects, it thinking about what we can do, about new ideas and indeed that we should learn all the time, to be able to confront those challenges that are coming with innovations and we should not expect the technology to solve our problems, we should rather use technology and be well educated for that. So now we open the floor for the discussion, and feel free to raise your hand or just come, join the panel, take the free seat and ask questions, make comments, just tell us what you are thinking. We absolutely are open for any ideas.

We often look at the panel, think they're coming from any other world. Indeed, any of you could be a speaker. It doesn't require that much. It is more about what you have to share.

>> Yes.

>> Okay. Thank you to offer me a Chair. Thank you for all of your encouraging speaking.

The presentations, the stories, narratives, perhaps.

Yeah, I'm sitting here on behalf of the Dutch Information Society of information professionals, but I wanted to introduce an activity which is done in Europe and it is called a framework for digital competencies and I thought speaking here about ‑‑ about the skills, it is also to ‑‑ it is also important to know that there are already frameworks available to measure or to use in education system, and that's called the European ECF, eCompetence framework, but in some cases, everybody is thinking that it is only the framework, but it is not only the framework which is important, behind the framework are also the profiles of a lot of jobs, different jobs, and they're described not only with competences but also with skills and attitudes and the framework is also added now with transferal aspects which include, for example, security, so we're saying that next to the competences, you also need ‑‑ you also need ‑‑ we think it is important that everybody is thinking about security, ethics, that kind of elements. I do not know exactly which one are there, but there are 7.

And around the frameworks, we're also saying it is important to think about the body of knowledge, so the University, please help us create that body of knowledge. Not only a body of knowledge but the certification and registration. How can we make that we dressed each other with professional and digital skills. That we trust each other and the fourth one, it is, the ethics. So the code of conduct, so that we work in the same way, and that we can trust each other around the globe.

I wanted to add that to your marvelous line‑up already that's existing also.

Thank you.

>> OLIANA SULA: Thank you very much.

Any comment from your part? Someone from the audience? Yes. Please, come here. Here. Here. Yes. Yes.

Both of you, just introduce yourselves, please, then you go.

>> AUDIENCE: I'm here on the invitation of Council of Europe.

First off, I would like to make a comment, I'm really surprised we're talking about digital skills here and on the panel, I don't see any young person although I feel that a young person person are the most effected, they live in an education system that's grown and grown and grown over to the last years and it has major points to make up so prepare young people for the new world.

I think one of the most important things in this discussion, it is to really how can we make people know that what they're learning is actually what's relevant in the future. I mean, nowadays, you can see people study IT, that's ‑‑ that's one of the areas where you said, well, the job for sure, after three years, people are not ‑‑ people's knowledge, it is outdated.

If you undertake, if you do education, if you learn your skills, how can we assure them that they're actually relevant and that they stay relevant because nowadays we need to be much more flexible in terms of how we adapt to new requirements and what knowledge is required and maybe just to make one more point I think, we talked about social skills briefly, but I think what's really important nowadays, is since we have less and less and less hierarchies to also consider how do people act as individuals in a world where they don't have strong influences from the outside that guide them along their way. My points.

>> AUDIENCE: I'm from Georgia.

First of all, thank you for the interesting presentation and interesting points.

I will ask the questions, and what about ‑‑ from my point of view, nowadays, the digitalization, there is a concern, a challenge related to jobs lost and jobs gained and we all do not know what will be in 2040 and I think that you have mentioned that the mental intelligence, the mental balance is the most important part and I think it is important for our societies to implement and to create in the universities and not all of the universities, in the schools like the programs specific programs. It will help overcome the difficulties with the mental issues because ‑‑ I think that ‑‑ I'm ‑‑ youth nowadays, in Georgia for example, a large majority of the youth are struggling in the mental issues, for example, they cannot find the jobs because nowadays there are a lot of jobs but in the future, for example, drivers, other professionals jobs will be lost because of the AIs involvement and development. We have to think about it to create some specific programs, and while these programs, it is in the University sense, because this is my point of view, and for each, and if we can create some specific regulations, something, I will be glad to implement in my country too.

Thank you.

>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: Thank you very much.

>> Could I quickly answer? Thank you. You have a good point. there should have been students or at least a younger person than us!.

Than here on the panel.

The other question, it was how do I know what's going to be relevant for you. Whether the skills you're developing right now, the knowledge you're building up, is going to be useful and valuable for the job market and the answer for that, you know, you have to ‑‑ I convenient wouldn't have an answer right now. You have to get in contact with the professional ecosystem as soon as possible when we start studying, you don't wait 4, 5 years and then go to the job market. There has to be engagement with business, startups, corporates much more easier and there are three things which you have and the first, it is the motivation, how motivated are you also because I have people in the first year that have come to our businesses and they do paid assignments, so forth, the second point, personality, it is the introvert, extrovert and there are two things you can't do much about it yourself, looking through the environments, but the last part, education, the university should encourage engagement was startups as soon as possible, not only so that you know what's relevant with the skill but I figure out what you actually like throughout your studies, you come out exactly knowing what you want to do and what you like.

That's my take on that.

>> Can I respond? I wanted to respond to the remark concerning the learning gets old. I cooperate with the University of Amsterdam especially with the job knowledge research and they focus also on fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. To crystallize intelligence, actually the body of knowledge that's internalized by long‑term memory and that you ‑‑ that actually gets old because the application of that knowledge is maybe overturned by new discoveries.

So this is what my point was in the talk, that the fluid intelligence, the capacity to master new thinking models, it makes you more flexible and also gives you the ‑‑ the flexibility to really understand what is actually meant by the application of a certain technology. This way, for instance, a very simple example, you will be able to use the latest version of Windows while not having studied that operation system.

Second, there was a remark about mental issues, that was what the young lady there made.

So the link with this hero journey, it is also related to different roles that you encounter with people around you when you start learning.

So in my practice, we have sort of a triangle, we have a mentor who actually tells you what to do, what the targets are, and we have, of course, the entrepreneur and we have a coach. So the coach there tells you how the entrepreneur is able to obtain the goals that the mentor has set. This is sort of a triangle.

What we don't do, and this is actually due to a lack of resources in our own practice, it is that we don't include a therapist.

When it concerns guidance for the entrepreneur, you have the mentor, you have the coach, and then at the last point you will have a therapist actually.

Actually what I said before, due to lack of resources, we're not able to help the entrepreneurs who might have full fluid intelligence who will be very successful if also a lot of emotional intelligence, but there is no safeguard, safety net actually for those entrepreneurs. Actually the last year, I have experienced a very promising female entrepreneur and she actually helped restart up a startup that we had actually written off in the portfolio. We revived that startup. Unfortunately she got caught up in her own mental issues and we didn't have the resources to help her. I really think that's a lost case for us. We definitely will increase the success rate of our ink patience practice but yeah, it is still a work in progress.

A very good point.

>> I would maybe distract to be what you said, in reaction, because I think it is very important what you said, that we experience, go in the field, understand the business, the relevance, what I personally see, however, it is a lack of businesses and their willingness to actually contribute to people making these experiences, these opportunities, they are for young people particularly, not very easy to access and we know that for example in the Netherlands, there is a culture of internships, you have to do the internships before you can go to work, we have unpaid internships and people cannot afford to just work for free and if that is what you need to get access to your digital skills, then we're ending up in a huge problem. We have people who can afford to get in touch with the skills and build their competencies and we have a lot of people who simply cannot afford that.

If that's what it takes to get access to the skills we need, we need to fundamentally rethink how we acquire them.

I don't really see that businesses are rethinking their model on how they are going to educate the workforce that they will need in the future.

Maybe just one quick point on the fluid intelligence, and this concept of we move towards skills that are not knowledge‑based, but that are more competency based, which is something that I hear a lot, but it doesn't really get up in people's heads, because when I grow up, when people grow up, and the parents, they come from a system where everything that they learned, the competencies, they're so knowledge‑based, and nowadays we need to rethink to an entirely new system that people don't have experience with and it is tangible, we have to pay attention that we're not paying in a‑‑ in a bubble, we have to talk to the people and show them how this is changing and what impact it has for their lives.

>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: Thank you very much.

Very quickly introduce yourself, your point.

>> AUDIENCE: I work in Brussels in European school net. We're an NGO focusing on education and I personally work a lot with teachers but also young people. Thank you for sharing all the programs you have, and I just would like to ask the question also primarily to the people from the governments, what do you do in terms of awareness raising? These programs, they're all very great and I'm a bit concerned that the ordinary citizen may not be as aware and it is very great to present this kind of initiative here but we are kind of very selected community, and when I'm talking to young people and teachers I have the feeling it is that a lot of them are not really aware that these opportunities exist.

>> OLIANA SULA: Thank you.

>> Thank you for the question.

There are actually two questions, and one question, it is how do we raise awareness, and I think we have a similar problem as Portugal, we're focusing on social inclusion to really get everybody on board and so it is especially important for the 50 plus category and the illiteracy because digital illiteracy is really large, we have 2 it.5 or 4 ‑‑ up to 4 million people in the Netherlands that doesn't have basic digital skills. We have a large problem there. So we now are trying with companies also, that's basically what we're doing, it is a central approach, it is to reach out to these people. Companies will also field the negative consequences of people not being able to use digital technologies.

So that's one.

The second, it is within education, I think it is very right that you point out that the teacher is the key factor in all of this.

That would be a huge challenge for us within our programme, where we're currently making a digital Agenda for the education sector, and one of the key factors, it will be how do we reach this ‑‑ how do teachers cope with new technologies, and one of the main ideas that we now have, but we're working those out, it is to let them experience how technology can work for them, so it is more ‑‑ they're more ‑‑ let's say feasible, more adoptive to new technology so that they can then see what it brings them so it is easier to cope with the new technology and to make those skills and acquire the skills.

I think the key will be if it helps the teacher, if the technology helps the teacher, it is easier for them to acquire digital skills.

Then again, we're currently facing the challenges. We're not ‑‑ we're not overly there, but it will be ‑‑ it will be a key issue for probably the next 10, 20 years.

>> OLIANA SULA: I want to add, what he mentions, in the Hague University of applied sciences, we call it blended learning. The teachers, they're familiarized with technology, so we use, for instance, a blended learning tool that can help us or even a story telling through video making and for instance in the management programme, we have a student making videos on the policy advice rather than writing it, and we have to provide feedback also in the same way.

There are plenty of ways to create awareness, but I think all in all, it is about being able to be ‑‑ you mentioned very important, to use the Universities as a vehicle, as a catalyzer of this awareness. I think generally how policies are made at the moment, they're more top‑down, and we, the universities, they're on the bottom. Can we ‑‑ I think we can ‑‑ I think for my own experience, will really effectively be in use as a catalyzer of the initiative.

That's why you have the invitation to approach universities and to just respond on what you mentioned on the unpaid internships, absolutely I see your point and we see many students, for example, at the Hague University struggling between having to I would say even their ‑‑ I would say 40 to 50% of students struggling between working in the study at the same time. On top of that, I add the issue of unpaid internships, obviously makes an impossible question and an impossible ‑‑ yeah. Yeah. Situation. To be addressed by them.

However, I want to point out that there has been ‑‑ since you point out the responsibility of the private sector, there are emerging proms that I will copy and follow, such as Fellowships.

So Fellowships, they're used by different private sectors, the Google public policy Fellowship, it is basically a student researching on issues of ‑‑ in this case, Google, let's say on the Internet policy, and everything that underlying this umbrella term and they would be paid while doing the research and being mentored by people working in Google. So I think obviously Google has the means to be able to produce this sort of Fellowship.

I think it is a very good practice to be incentivized by other stakeholders in terms of facilitating the participation and the labor market while doing internships.

I think I'll definitely praise this kind of best practice.

>> I actually have two remarks on the IT illiteracy and the money.

Concerning the media literacy of the IT literacy: Last week I was presenting the idea of a blockchain based anti‑fake news system. Of course, it is what people call the third world country there, so I was surprised that they were even interested in this idea to be presented there at the symposium. It was basically on authentic journalism. I explained the blockchain, everything, everybody was like blockchain sounds complex. Afterwards, I asked them, so do you think you can apply this technology here and they said yes, we can.

I was like oh, how is this possible, I was curious.

Then the editor‑in‑chief of the, they said the whole thing you mention on blockchain, all of the bits and bytes you mention, it is not relevant. What's relevant is the way of thinking, the thought that you actually need to present news, information in a verifiable way, it is not about truth but verifying, so the main take away I had from that experience, it is that while we talk about IT and literacy, it is very important to look at the metaphors that we use when we communicate about technology. Because of the lack of metaphorless that are used when communicating concerning technology, a lot of people are just blocked out of the discussion because they cannot visualize what the principles are that the technology actually works with.

The second thing I have with the money such, it is what the young man there mentioned, it is that you shouldn't underestimate the effect that a lack of money can have on entrepreneur, especially when it involves innovation. Especially those in technology, they are only working with a lot of uncertainty. If you put additional pressure on people by not giving them enough money to fulfill their basic needs, it will only compromise their thinking capabilities, so also their mental energy and thus their intelligence.

Yeah.

I was very much advocated, not only with the organizations like Google are able to provide fellowship programs, but maybe with the universities or also maybe with municipalities, we should think about incubation proms for entrepreneurs that combat centralization actually of intelligence which is happening currently with Google.

>> Just a very small follow‑up on what you're saying.

I think someone from the Dutch government is here, he can maybe care that message to inside the government, if it wasn't spending 50 million euros on the GS summit to give the stage to politicians, global leaders to talk about Entrepreneurship, which is our thing, I think if we give that money to fellowship programs in the Netherlands, we have a better approach.

Please carry that message inside.

>> OLIANA SULA: We will carry it.

>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: That's the beauty of the events, when you can get together different stakeholders and ask like this, please listen to us, bring this message further.

We unfortunately have to finish soon. Even though we would like to keep the discussion running for hours because it is really so productive.

We have one short comment, please. We still need to make a few announcements.

>> The comment or a question?

>> OLGA KYRYLIUK: Whatever.

>> I have a very short question towards the two of you: What do you think the best strategy is to ‑‑ nowadays, there is a huge lack of data scientists and AI engineers. Especially if you look at the University of Amsterdam, there is a lot of students that are not allowed to do their AI study because ‑‑ not because they're not able to do it, because there is just a shortage of just professors that can teach them.

What do you think the best strategy is to fix that problem.

>> It is an interesting question. It is hard not to ‑‑ official just the University of Amsterdam, the professor there told us nowadays Google is taking away their stuff. The key element is tough and then they called it a moderate education ‑‑ an AI specialist, and he said Google just came and they paid him 100,000 euros just to come work with Google.

When we face that challenge, we cannot counter with that amount of money, we cannot compete with Google on signing bow us ins in of 100K or plus, even for moderate professors, that would be just ‑‑ it would be kind of insane actually.

One of the key elements will be, yeah, to enlarge the population of AI specialists, et cetera, et cetera. And then again, we have flexibility that allows for creating an extra pole of people.

We're in a negative, spiral towards the bottom. We haven't found yet the right answer, but if Google just pays like 100K, yeah, the government cannot compete with ‑‑ so that makes the solution very tough.

I don't really have a good answer right now. We're working on that and thinking about how to compete with Google and how can we make arrangements with Google that they don't or that they cooperate with Universities to teach students or how do we keep the knowledge professionals inside of universities

>> CATHERINE GARCIA-VAN HOOGSTRATEN: I would suggest one, I have ‑‑ I'm working in different environments around public policy. Technology.

A thing that's emerging is an issue of social responsibility, corporate social responsibility. One of the strategies to advocate for what you're asking, it is, yeah, they're hiring all the top level people that has the knowledge on data science. But you could use the same strategy, so meaning corporate sponsor ability, to give it back to universities, so on.

To advocate for that. So that is the first advice.

The second one, I think it is putting together the programs such as the one I presented today, that is a challenge‑based learning programme. That by itself requires the collaboration of the stakeholders. I think once you have set up this kind of collaboration that can be become more institutionalized, they're what we're trying to do in different projects that we have at the Hague University in what concerns to specifically cybersecurity, but of course, I understand, for instance, we ‑‑ at the moment we have a short project which has the data analysis expert in data science expert, and so then that's a way of borrowing knowledge and skills at least in short term that can eventually ‑‑ it has paid off in the long term.

>> OLIANA SULA: Thank you very much. Unfortunately we have to wrap up. As an important part of the EuroDIG messages, which we'll summarize from all of the sessions and Bev with us the reporter for our session, Ana Maria Correa, who will go through the key points that she grabbed from there, from injury discussions and it is not for the discussion of commenting from your side but more like for agreeing, not agreeing how to summarize it. If you completely disagree with something, raise your hand, let us know.

>> ANA MARIA CORREA: I had the very hard mission to summarize this session in four bullet points.

First of all, our current digital driven society requires new learning skills for building the necessary skills to meet technological innovation challenges. Policymaker, business, Civil Society shall create in cooperation a sustainable work environment, that public authorities have recognized the two challenges, including the need it of new types of experts and that digitalization has changed the entire labor market. The Netherlands has private public programs for digital literacy and have included this in secondary education. Universities should consider implementing projects that can solve practical and emerging social issues, including cybersecurity challenge and at the local and International Level.

Capacity building should encompass public and private partnerships in order to tackle cybersecurity workforce shortage. Under supply and under skilling the labor market has to be addressed altogether. Not as distinctive problems. Public initiatives in Portugal have been recreated to ensuring the digital competence both by technology, citizen rights and technology. Action has been taken to ‑‑ in terms of education, qualifications, specialization and research to prim prove the digital literacy.

You.

Digital literacy can improving vulnerable people's lives, Bitcoins for instance can include the refugees in the economic systems and digital identity cannot allow ‑‑ can allow refugees to have services that are denied to public authorities and other traditional system.

The challenge is that many refugees have no skills, the humanitarian groups, public authorities, the private sector, they should invest on the digital training of vulnerable people to improve their lives.

Do you all you agree with that in

>> OLIANA SULA: They agree with that. It is challenging. It would be great to be concluded further.

>> I can submit it to you directly. I feel the entire point that I was trying to address regarding the accessibility of skills building measures was left out. I feel like it is a very, very, very important point to take up especially because we're going to further the discussion based on this paper.

Thank you.

>> OLIANA SULA: Thank you for coming to the session, we had a very interactive discussion. Let's hope that some of the challenges will be resolved incomes year and I thank our speakers, our and the remote moderator, to everybody who joined and the speakers from the panel, I would like to thank as well and I wish you a very great evening here.

>> I want to make a quick remark, that apart from EuroDIG, there is also another initiative existence for the southeastern Europe and we had an event similar to EuroDIG a month ago and we have the messages from there already printed and ready and we had the messages on the digital skills and if you're interested in what's happening in this part of the world, please come to this table and take this message and also feel free to spread the word about that and during this initiative as well and one more remark, I would like to ask you to give a warm round of applause to my co‑moderator who has her birthday today! We congratulate you!.

That's it. Thank you very much.


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