1. Welcome and official opening
The Hon. Dr. Edward Zammit Lewis was successfully elected in the
2013 General elections for the first time in the 8th Electoral District and
was chosen by the Prime Minister Dr. Joseph Muscat to form part of his
cabinet appointing him a Parliamentary Secretary for Competitiveness
and Economic Growth. He was until recently a lawyer by profession,
specialising in litigation in the civil, commercial, constitutional, liable
law and the human rights sphere. He graduated in BA European Studies
and International relations and subsequently obtained a Doctorate of
Laws. During his university years, the Hon. Dr. Edward Zammit Lewis
was actively engaged in the Labour Youth Forum, where he occupied the
post of President for two years and was also elected as a local councillor
in Attard.
Dr. Mara Jakobsone is Vice president of Latvian Information and
communications association LIKTA and Chair ofTelecentre-Europe.
Mara is one of the founders of the Latvian ICT association in 1998 and
as Vice –president of LIKTA responsible for information society
development, e-Skills and ICT competence development activities. Her
responsibilities include development, coordination and implementation
of information society and e-Skills related policies, partnerships and
projects, as well as international cooperation. From 1984-99, she
worked as researcher and assistant professor at the Faculty of Business
administration, University of Latvia. She holds a Doctorate in
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2. economics (1988) from the Institute of Finances and Economics,
St.Petersburg, Russia and University of Latvia.
Godfrey Vella has over 35 years experience in the ICT sector and has
occupied leading management positions in private and public sector IT
and telecommunications companies, both within local and international
organisations. Earlier this year he was appointed Digital Champion for
Malta, a role that involves spearheading initiatives to help eliminate the
digital divide in our society. His experience in the ICT sector has
included a number of senior management and technical positions
within organisations such as IBM, NCR, Eutelsat, Maltacom,
DataStream and SITA. In these positions he has led several complex
ICT projects. He has also been involved in national ICT policy
formulation since the 90's, initially as a member of the National
Strategy for IT steering committee and eventually as Chair of the
National Commission for IT.
Gabriel Rissola is Managing Director of Telecentre Europe. He brings
to the organisation 24 years of extensive international experience in
digital inclusion projects. With a long-lasting interest in the
development of telecentres as engines of learning, empowerment and
social change, Gabriel always looked for the opportunities to put
technology at the service of people. After a decade devoted to the
Internet industry (where he was an entrepreneur both in the online
media and learning sub-industries) he started to run action-research
projects with a policy perspective, becoming expert in fund-raising and
project management of transnational initiatives, always around the
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3. topic of ICT for learning and empowerment.
Keynote speakers
Miguel González-Sancho is currently Deputy Head of the Unit
“Growth and Jobs” at the European Commission. Previously he was a
Member of Cabinet of Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European
Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, and before that he held
different positions in the European Commission Directorate General for
the Information Society such as Deputy Head of the Unit “Digital
Agenda: Policy Coordination” and of the unit "ICT for inclusion". He has
directly participated in the design and implementation of European
digital strategies over the last 10 years (Digital Agenda, i20210, eEurope). His expertise also covers European policies and financing for
R&D and innovation in the areas of ICT for public services and social
inclusion, accessibility and literacy.
André Richier is Principal Administrator at the European
Commission in Brussels within the Directorate General Enterprise and
Industry (Key Enabling Technologies and Digital Economy Unit). He is
responsible for policy issues relating to information technology,
competitiveness and innovation and the digital economy in particular eleadership and the EU e-skills strategy. He is also contributing to the
"Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs" launched in March 2013. Prior to
joining the Commission in 1994, he held sales and marketing positions
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4. in the ICT industry. He started his career at IBM in 1985.
Gianluca Misuraca is a Senior Scientist at the Information Society
Unit of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, Institute for
Prospective Technological Studies (JRC-IPTS) based in Seville, Spain
where, since 2009, he is leading research in the area of ICT for
governance and policy modeling, and research on ICT for social
inclusion and social innovation, in particular the MIREIA Project –
Measuring the Impact of eInclusion actors on the Digital Agenda for
Europe. Before joining the JRC-IPTS Gianluca was the Managing
Director and Scientific Coordinator of the Global Executive Master in eGovernance. Gianluca is a recognised scholar with many publications in
the field of Information Society development.
Speakers and panelists
Ekaterina Fedotova currently manages projects run by Fundacja
TechSoup in Central and Eastern Europe on technology capacity
building for civil society organizations.Prior to this Ekaterina was the
project director at PH International and led the Russian flagship
programs in partnership with Microsoft, Tvoy Kurs and IDEA. Within
six years the programs trained 400,000 Russians in over 100 cities in
digital literacy and employability skills.Ekaterina was one of the
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5. founding committee members for Telecentre Europe.
Liga Kursite Masena is the Coordinator of the Global Libraries
Program in Latvia and has been working for the Global Libraries
initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Latvia since 2006.
At the Culture Information Systems Centre, she is responsible for
coordinating activities of the public library development project called
“Father’s Third Son” (3td). Liga is a member of the Global Libraries
European Union Working Group. Prior to she managed the United
Nations (UN) Information Center - Library and assisted to several
development projects of the UNDP (United Nations Development
Program) office in Riga, Latvia.
Laurentiu Bunescu is Operations Manager at Telecentre Europe.
He has been involved in the European telecentres movement since
2005. Apart from overseeing the association's operations , he also
focuses on supporting network members and developing a forwardlooking strategy for the organisation. He also manages a number of
projects including the annual Get Online Week campaign and
Telecentre-Europe’s
annual Summits. Before
Telecentre-Europe,
Laurentiu started one of the first telecentres in Romania, and became a
facilitator and supporter of the Romanian national network of
telecentres.
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6. Dr. Bastian Pelka is researcher and co-ordinator at the "
Sozialforschungsstelle Dortmund" amongst others. He is working on the
topics school-labour market transition, social innovation and
eInclusion. He has been participating in and leading several EU funded
development projects with telecentres all around Europe.Dr. Pelka’s
most recent research topic is the further development of people (like
“eFacilitators”) and spaces (like telecentres) that provide digital
competences for disadvantaged persons. Another topic is the funding of
social innovation.He graduated in communication science and is
working in ICT and education since 2001.
Gabriela Barna has established EOS Romania Foundation with a
vision to support digital inclusion in Romania. Over the past 10 years,
Gabriela has worked in the field of ICT in education, social
development, participatory strategic planning, monitoring and
evaluation with a special focus on ICT for development. Her main
interest and focus remains ICT and how ICT can make a significant
contribution to helping individuals, organisations and communities
better participate in the knowledge economy.Gabriela is a board
member of Telecentre-Europe. and education since 2001..nothe
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7. Ian Clifford has established YouRock Online Ltd to support youth
employability across Europe. The venture will develop a social
innovation platform to enable young people to build an online
employability profile for themselves. Ian was a founder, and former
Chair, of Telecentre-Europe, where he drove the development in early
2012 of Skillage.eu, a tool for employability support aimed at young
people. From 2010 Ian also helped to establish Get online Week in
Europe. Prior to this, Ian was Head of Business Development for the
network of 4,000 UK online centres, where he was responsible for all
business development activities, liaison with stakeholders, as well as
international development.
Natacha Moquet is Project officer at the Institut National de
Formation et de Recherche sur l’Education Permanente (INFREP). She
has joined the network of La Ligue de l’enseignement in 2010, as
European project officer and animator of European topics. Natacha has
coordinated several European projects and developed on topics of basic
skills, on-the-job-training, digital gap and others. A recent project is
“VET4e-inclusion”, which developed a framework for recognition of efacilitatora as well as online training modules for e-facilitators (
“animateurs multimedia”). 2001
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8. Wilfried Paroubek is Area Sales Manager CEE & Germany,for
Microsoft Learning eXperience. He is active in the IT Training industry
since 2003 and from 2007 working for Microsoft Learning. In his role
he works very closely with commercial training organisations, academic
institutions and government organisations to enable students to
improve their IT skills and get certified and make people more
employable. Before working in the IT Training industry, he was active in
the food industry. Wilfried graduated from the Erasmus University in
Rotterdam in 1993.
Charmaine Kerr is the Project Coordinator for the European
Coordinating Body in Math Science and Technology at European
Schoolnet. She is responsible for the activities related to and
coordination of the project with relevant stakeholders. Prior to joining
European Schoolnet, she worked for the European Monitoring Centre
for Drugs and Drug Addiction, Lisbon, Portugal and within the
Foundation for Social Welfare Services as Research Executive among
other positions.
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9. Pedro Aguilera has been working in the Esplai Foundation since
2004 as responsible of the Conecta now project. He has been involved in
the Telecentre.Europe.org movement since 2006. Nowadays he is
working in the implementation of several Lifelong learning projects
supported by the European Commission. He is Member of European
Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) in honour of
Spain( 2008-2012). Pedro is an expert of the Roma Spanish Advisor
Council and member of the Roma Intergrup at the Catalan Regional
Parliament.
Ela Dydak is Project Officer at the Information Society Development
Foundation (FRSI). She has been working for FRSI since 2008. Ela is
currently actively involved in the preparation and implementation of its
key initiative – the Library Development Program, a result of the
partnership between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the
Polish-American Freedom Foundation. She is a pecialist in preparation
of grant applications to Polish and foreign program funds, including EU.
She is passionate of public libraries. er topic is the funding of social
innovation.He graduated in
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10. Ivan Stojilović is the manager of IAN Telecentar, a local NGO from
Serbia, and Deputy Chair Board member at Telecentre-Europe. Since
2001 he has been active in promoting the use of modern informationcommunication technologies in Serbia through the network of
telecentres. He holds an MA diploma in psychology. Ivan is also the
author of text books for IT courses, web design course and psychology of
art.er topic is
Birgit Jæger is Professor of Technology and Societal Development at
the Department of Society and Globalisation, Roskilde University,
Denmark. Her research focuses on the development of e-government as
well as citizens and users role in innovation and technology assessment.
Recently she managed a research project concerning senior citizens’ use
of ICT presented in 'Young Technologies in Old Hands' (DJØF
Publishing, 2005) and Science Studies (Vol. 17, No. 2). Currently she is
working on a study of Collaborative Innovation in the Public Sector.
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